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EMIE'ENT 



ENGLISH LIBERALS 



IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 



J. MORRISON DAVIDSON 

'I 

(OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE), 

BARRISTER -AT- LAW. 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

1880. 



6^ 



5Q>^ 



n^^ 



AUTHOR'S EDITION. 



Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, <5r' Co., 
Boston. 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



npHESE biographic sketches of "Eminent English 
-*- Liberals " appeared in the old country shortly 
before the fall of the Beaconsfield administration. 

That event fulfilled the hopes and anticipations of 
the writer so completely, that, in preparing this edition 
for the American press, he has deemed it inexpedient 
to alter the original text in almost any particular. 
The only important change eifected is one of name : 
' ' Liberal ' ' has been substituted for ' ' Radical ' ' on the 

» 

title-page to avoid possible misinterpretation. Truly 

regarded, Americans and Englishmen form but one 

mighty people, moved by common instincts and identical 

interests. Especially ought the great contemporary 

thinkers and doers of both countries to be made common 

property ; and, should this volume contribute in some 

little measure towards so desirable an end, its primary 

object will have been attained. 

J. M. D. 

Uxioisr Club, Boston, 
September, 1880. 

iii 



PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. 



rpHESE brief sketches of eminent Radicals were 
-^ originally contributed to the London "Weekly 
Dispatch." 

They were each written at a single spell, and it was 
not at first intended that they should be republished. 

They, however, attracted an attention gratifying to 
me in proportion to its unexpectedness. 

Many brother journalists and several distinguished 
members of the legislature, whose judgment I was 
bound to respect, urged reproduction. Hence this 
volume, which owes much to the enterprise of the 
publishers. 

As regards the sketches themselves, their chief merit, 
if they have any, consists in this, that they have not 
been "written to order," but express as nearly as 
possible the sentiments of the writer regarding twenty- 
four representative Radicals, with most of whom he is 
personally acquainted. 

These ' ' Men of the Left ' ' I regard as the salt of our 

V 



VI PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. 

political world. Nevertheless, I can say with truth, 
that, if I have set down nothing in malice, neither have 
I consciously extenuated in aught. 

To complete the roll of eminent Radicals, at least a 
score of other honorable names ought to be added. 
" There be of them that have left a name behind them, 
that their praises might be reported. And some there 
be that have no memorial ; but these also were merci- 
ful men, whose righteousness shall not be forgotten. 
With their seed shall remain a good inheritance, and 
their glory shall not be blotted out. The people will 
tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will show 
forth their praise." 

J. M. D. 
6 Pump Court, Temple, London, 
January, 1880. 



001S"TE]SrTS. 



EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Page 

William Ewabt Gladstone 1 

John Bbight 13 

Peteb Alfred Taylor 25 

Sin Charles Wentworth Dilke .... 36 

Joseph Cowen 51 

Sir Wilfrid Lawson 64 

Henry Fawcett 75 

Joseph Chamberlain 89 

Thomas Burt 103 

Henry Kichard 115 

Leonard Henry Courtney 128 

Anthony John Mundella 139 

Charles Bradlaugh 149 

EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

John Morley 167 

KoBERT William Dale 179 

Joseph Arch 192 

Edward Spencer Beesly 204 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon 217 

James Beal 231 

MoNcuRE Daniel Conway 241 

James Allanson Picton 253 

Frederick Augustus Maxse 263 

The Hon. Aubebon Hebbebt . . . . . 275 

Edward Augustus Freeman 288 

vii 



EMINENT ENGLISH LIBERALS. 



I. 

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 

" His strength is as the strength of ten, 
Because his heart is pure." 

MR. GLADSTONE has himself defined a Radical 
politician as a Liberal who "is in earnest." I 
thankfallj^ accept the definition, and unhesitatingly 
place his honored name at the head of this series of 
biographical sketches of eminent Radicals. He is, 
and has ever been, pre-eminently in earnest, — in ear- 
nest, not for himself, but for the common weal. The 
addition, "for the commonweal," is essential to the 
definition ; for time was, of course, when Mr. Gladstone 
was not numbered with eminent Radicals, but with emi- 
nent Tories, whose characteristic it is, if they are in 
earne'st at all, to be in earnest chiefl}^ for themselves or 
the interests of their class. Of this latter reprehensible 
form of earnestness, I venture to affirm Mr. Gladstone 
has at no time been guilty. While 3^et in his misdirected 
youth among the Tories, he was never realty of them. 

" He only in a general, honest thought, 
And common good to all, made one of them." 

1 



2 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

The circumstances of his birth and education almost 
necessarily determined that he should enter public life 
as "the rising hope" of Toryism. The strength, 
candor, generosity, and innate nobility of his nature 
have with equallj' irresistible force made his whole sub- 
sequent career a slow but sure process of repudiation 
of ever}^ thing that Tories hold dear. Forty-six years 
ago, when he entered Parliament for Newark as the 
nominee of the Duke of Newcastle, he was the hope of 
the High Tory party ; to-day he is the hope of the 
undaunted Radicalism of England, which, despite Con- 
servative re-actions and Whig infidelities, knows nothing 
of defeat ; which in adversity, like Milton, — blind and 
fallen on evil times, — "bates not a jot of heart or 
hope, but steers right onwards." Old as he is, his 
true place is where he is, — at the helm of the Radical 
barque. Who can foresee himself ? 

William Ewart Gladstone is the fourth son of Sir 
John Gladstone of Fasque, Kincardineshire, first baro- 
net. He was born on the 29th of December, 1809, at 
Liverpool, where his father, who had originall}^ come 
from Leith, was then famous as a successful merchant, 
and as an influential friend and partisan of. Canning. 
The name was originally spelt Gladstanes or Gledstanes ; 
gled being Lowland Scottish for a hawk, and stanes 
meaning rocks. It is still not uncommon in man}^ parts 
of rural Scotland to call a man b}'' the place of his abode 
at the expense of his proper patronj-mic. In earlier 
times such local appellations often adhered permanently 
to individuals, and it is to this process that the Glad- 
stone famil}^ is indebted for its name. 

The Premier's mother was the daughter of Mr. 
Andrew Robertson, Provost of Dino:wall, whose descent 



WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE. 3 

the crednloLis Burke traces from Robert Bruce, the 
patriot King of Scotland. Be this as it may, Mr. 
Gladstone is of pure Scottish blood, — a fact of which 
he has oftener than once expressed himself proud. 
Indeed, the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum is his in a 
remarkable degree ; and it has its influence on public 
opinion across the border, notwithstanding his English 
training and his antipathetic High-Churchism. How- 
ever England may abase herself before the gorgeous 
Lord Benjingo, Scotland will never turn her back on 
the undecorated Gladstone. There lives not a Scots- 
man that is not inwardly proud of him ; for blood is, 
after all, thicker than water. Evicted from one English 
constituency after another for his devotion to Liberal 
principles, there is a sort of " fitness of things," not 
without a certain pathos, in the gallant and successful 
eflfort which the country of his forefathers has made to 
seize a seat for him from between the teeth of the great 
feudal despot of the North, " the bold Buccleuch." 

From a very tender age 3^oung Gladstone exhibited a 
wonderful aptitude for learning, and an almost super- 
human industry, which age, instead of abating, seem- 
ingly increases. His daily autograph correspondence 
with high and low, rich and poor, conducted chiefly by 
the much-derided post-card, would afford ample employ- 
ment for about six Somerset House clerks working at 
their usual pace. He possesses, I should saj^, without 
exception, the most omnivorous and untiring brain in 
England, — possibly in the whole world. No wonder 
that his course at Eton and at Oxford was marked by 
the highest distinction. A student of Christ Church, 
he graduated " double first " in his twenty-second 3^ear, 
a superlative master of the language and literature of 



4 EMINENT LIBEEALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Greece and Rome. He availed himself of every advan- 
tage the university could bestow ; and, unlike most other 
scholars who subsequently become politicians and men 
of the world, he has never ceased to add to the immense 
store of his academic acquirements. He has published 
Latin sacred verses not appreciably inferior in grace to 
those of Buchanan and Milton ; and as a Homeric 
student his " Studies of Homer and the Homeric Age " 
entitle him to no mean place among scholarly critics. 

Unfortunately, however, for him, the sciences of 
observation — chemistry, botany, geology, natural 
history, and the like — were in his day almost wholl}^ 
neglected at Oxford ; and in place thereof an incredible 
mind-distorting theology was in vogue, from the evil 
consequences of which the Premier has not j^et been 
able altogether to emancipate himself. It has laid him 
open to manj^ false charges, and to some true ones. It. 
made him for j'ears a defender of the utterly indefensi- 
ble Irish Establishment; and, when at last " the slow 
and resistless force of conviction " brought him to a 
better frame of mind, the change was attributed by 
thousands who ought to have known better to a con- 
cealed conversion to Romanism. In vain has he striven 
in pamphlet and periodical to rebut the allegation, and 
to make intelligible to the English people his theologi- 
cal stand-point. Newman, Manning, Capel, — the most 
redoubtable champions of Roman Catholicism in Eng- 
land, — he has met foot to foot and hand to hand on 
their own ground, and foiled with their own weapons. 
He has proved, with amazing learning and ingenuit}'^, 
worthy of the schoolmen, that the Papac}' has at last 
succeeded in "repudiating both science and histor}^'* 
and that his Holiness himself is next door to Antichrist. 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 5 

He, a simple layman, has demonstrated that he is one 
of the greatest theologians of the age. Still, much as 
I admire learning in every department of human intelli- 
gence, I must confess that I should have liked Mr. 
Gladstone better had he been more of a Gallio in such 
matters. One would almost as soon see a noble intel- 
lect like his exercising itself about the exploded theo- 
ries of the astrologists or alchemists, as about the 
decisions of church councils, early or late. 

His personal religion is, however, altogether another 
matter. It is the chief source of his overpowering 
sense of duty, of his righteous indignation, of his 
tender humanity. He is as much a Christian statesman 
as Pym, Sir Harry Vane, or Oliver Cromwell. His 
unaffected ipiety has opened up to him the hearts of 
his Nonconformist fellow-countrymen as nothing else 
could have done. Where he is best known he is most 
esteemed ; viz., at his seat of Hawarden, — a fine prop- 
erty bought by his wife's ancestor. Sergeant Glynne, 
chief justice to Oliver Cromwell, on the sequestration 
of the Stanley estates, after the execution of James, the 
seventh Earl of Derby. Every morning by eight o'clock 
Mr. Gladstone may be seen wending his way to the 
village church of Hawarden to engage in matins as a 
prelude to the work of the day. Even when Prime 
Minister of England, he has been found in the hum- 
blest homes reading to the sick or dying consolatory 
passages of Scripture in his own soft melodious tones. 

The best controller of the national exchequer that 
the country has ever had, his personal charities are 
almost reckless. In the course of his long walks in 
the neighborhood of Hawarden, his pockets have an 
astonishing knack of emptying themselves ; and amus- 



6 



EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



ing stories are told of his having had to walk home 
inconvenient distances of ten and twelve miles in the 
dark because of his inability to raise so much as a third- 
class railway fare. As Prime Minister he refused an 
increase of salary ; and when he quitted office he was 
so impoverished, that his famous collection of china is 
said to have been sold in consequence. 

All his known habits and recreations are of the most 
innocent and healthy kind. He has nothing either of 
the jocke}'' or the gamekeeper in his composition, — a 
fact which ma}^ account for a good deal of the antipathy 
exhibited towards him by the enlightened squirearchy 
of England. Yet Mr. Gladstone has none of. the " lean 
and hungry look" of a Cassius. He is not a total 
abstainer ; but he is next door. His is pre-eminently 
a mens sana in corpora sano. As is well known, he is 
one of the most stalworth tree-fellers in England. His 
skill with his axe would not disgrace a Canadian back- 
woodsman ; and he has curious taste in carving and 
pottery, which is almost scientific. 

Never was there a public man whose private "rec- 
ord " has been more blameless. In his zeal for domes- 
tic purity, he has not hesitated to rebuke the " conjugal 
infidelit}' " which, since the death of the Prince Consort, 
has developed itself in close proximit}^ to the throne. 
In a word, he is a Christian statesman, with all the 
advantages and disadvantages which adhere to that 
character. 

Let me now say a word of his renown as an orator. 
As a speaker I should be disposed to place him midway 
between Bright at his best and Beaconsfield at an}' 
time. For moral earnestness Mr. Bright is not his 
inferior ; and in the command of pathos, humor, clear- 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 7 

cut thoughts, and chaste, limpid English, he is un- 
doubtedl}^ his superior. On the other hand, in versa- 
tilit}'', in capacity for receiving new ideas, and of 
marshalling multitudinous details, Mr. Gladstone has 
no living equal. He is the orator of affairs. He has 
done what no one has ever done before him, — made 
budgets eloquent, and figures to possess a lofty moral 
significance. 

Lord Beaconsfield unquestionably possesses in an 
eminent degree some of the first requisites of oratory. 
He is more witty, more ornate, and more audacious 
than Mr. Gladstone ; but all is spoiled by levity, hope- 
less inaccuracy, and, I fear, essential insincerit}^ " Can 
there be," Mr. Carlyle has asked, "a more horrid 
object in creation than an eloquent man not speaking 
the truth?" Was it "the cool, conscious juggler," 
the "miraculous Premier" of yesterdaj", that the 
Prophet of Chelsea had in his mind's eye when, 3'ears 
ago, I heard him put this important interrogatory on 
the occasion of his rectorial address to the students of 
Edinburgh University? Again, I fear, yes. 

Mr. Gladstone's oratory is marred b}^ excessive 
copiousness of diction ; jet there is a charm in this rare 
defect. He plunges right into a sea of words, from 
which there seems no possible extrication ; and, when 
he emerges safe and sound, his hearers feel like those 
who, "in the brave daj's of old," beheld Horatius 
" plunge headlong in the tide : " — 

" And when above the surges 
They saw his crest apj)ear, 
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry; 
And even the ranks of Tuscany 
Could scarce forbear to cheer." 



8 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Gladstone's conduct as a parliamentary leader 
has been severely censured by professed Liberals, and 
his resolution to dissolve Parliament in 1874 has been 
specially instanced as a proof of strategic unwisdom. 
I distinctly demur both to indictment and proof. Those 
who say that he is not a good leader are not ' ' in ear- 
nest," and such men can never be expected to follow 
Mr. Gladstone with much comfort to themselves. He 
is the natural leader of the Advanced Liberals in the 
House. The Brights, Dilkes, Chamberlains, Taylors, 
and Courtne3^s find no difficulty in following his lead. 
As for the dissolution of 1874, so much complained of, 
no Liberal Minister professing to govern, as every 
Liberal Minister is supposed to do, in accordance with 
the will of the people, could, in the face of the adverse 
by-elections which had taken place, honestl}^ refrain 
from directly appealing to the constituent authority. 
Indeed, the pity is, it seems to me, that the appeal was 
not made sooner. If that had been done, all might 
have been well. The Conservative re- action, which 
gave birth to Jingo and so many sorrows, might have 
been nipped in the bud. 

It remains to notice in very brief compass a few 
of the more important events in the Premier's public 
life, giving preference to the more remote. In 1832 
he was returned for Newark in the Conservative inter- 
est, a'nd in 1834 Sir Robert Peel made him a Junior 
Lord of the Treasury. In 1835 he found himself 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Shortly after. Sir 
Robert's administration fell ; and Mr. Gladstone, in the 
cool shade of opposition, found leisure to write his oft- 
quoted works, "The State in its Relations with the 
Church," and "Church Principles considered in their 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 9 

Eesults." Lord Macaula}^, in "The Edinburgh Re- 
view," thus spoke the judgment of posterity: "We 
dissent from his opinions ; but we admire his talents. 
We respect his integrity and benevolence, and we hope 
that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to 
engross him as to leave him no leisure for hterature and 
philosophy." 

In those days Mr. Gladstone held the untenable doc- 
trine that it is the business of the State to uphold 
" the true religion." He ardently strove to find for the 
State Church a moral basis and justification which it 
can never have. In so doing he was "in earnest," 
but oblivious of the wisdom of One who understood 
the genius of Christianity better than himself: "My 
kingdom is not of this world." Since then " the slow 
and resistless force of conviction " has come to his aid. 

In 1841 Sir Eobert Peel came back to office, and Mr. 
Gladstone was made Vice-President of the Board of 
Trade. In 1843 he became President of the Board, 
and for the first time his wonderful genius as an admin- 
istrator had full scope. In 1845 he resigned office 
rather than be a party to adding to the endowments of 
the Eomanist college of Maynooth, Ireland, which he 
had condemned in his work on "Church and State." 
Shiel wittily remarked that "the statesman had been 
sacrificed to the author." In point of fact, his resig- 
nation is a standing rebuke to those who have basely 
accused him of place-hunting. 

From this time onwards Mr. Gladstone exhibited, in 
increasing measure and in numerous ways, his leaning 
towards Liberal opinions. Canningite and Oxford 
influences began to lose their hold over him. "I 
trace," he said at Oxford in December, 1878, "in the 



10 EMINENT LIBEBALS IN PAELIAMENT. 

education of Oxford of my own time one great defect. 
Perhaps the fault was mine : but I must admit that I 
did not learn, when at Oxford, that which I have 
learned since; viz., to set a due value on the imper- 
ishable and inestimable principles of human liberty." 
In the budget of 1845 he defended a proposal to 
put slave-grown sugar on a less favorable footing 
than free ; and, when the corn-law question became a 
" burning " one, he resigned his seat for Newark because 
of the anti-repeal views of the Duke of Newcastle. His 
powerful pen was, however, at the service of the re- 
pealers ; and, when the battle was fought and won, he 
was returned in 1847 for the University of Oxford. 
He was still, of course, nominally a Tory ; but one of 
his first acts was to support the removal of Jewish 
disabilities, to the confusion of many of those whose 
" rising hope " he was still supposed to be. 

In the session of 1849 he made a powerful speech in 
favor of the reform of our colonial policy, from which 
much benefit has indirectly flowed to the colonies. 

In 1851 " circumstances purely domestic " took him 
to Naples, and there his humanity was stirred to its 
very core by the unheard-of brutalities of King Bomba. 
His passionate cry for redress resounded throughout 
the civilized world : " I have seen and heard the strong 
and true expression used, ' This is the negation of God 
erected into a system of government.' " For once 
Lord Palmerston was on the side of justice, and the 
sword of G-aribaldi eventually wrought out for the Nea- 
l^ohtans the just vengeance which Mr. G-ladstone had 
invoked on their tyrants. 

In the administration of 1859, Mr. Gladstone, as 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was instrumental in the 



WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE. 11 

repeal of the paper duty, and in contracting the com- 
mercial treaty with France. Of his remission of taxes 
and reductions of the national debt, it is unnecessary to 
speak. They are achievements engraved with an iron 
pen on the financial records of his country. 

Two great questions, and two only, of his time has 
he completely misjudged, — the Crimean war and the 
American war. Of the first he was, to some extent, 
particeps criminis; and, with regard to the latter, a sin- 
gularly rash and hostile utterance by implication num- 
bered him with the friends of secession. For the for- 
mer he has atoned by his late almost superhuman efibrts 
to prevent its recurrence ; and for the latter there is 
ample compensation in our wisest international act, the 
Alabama arbitration. It is no small misfortune that, 
in the course of his busy life, Mr. Gladstone has never 
found time to visit the generous land of ' ' our kin be- 
yond the sea." Such an experience would have taught 
him that it is better to be enshrined in the heart of a 
great people than to obtain the favor of all the courts 
and courtiers in Christendom. 

Of the mighty impulse which he gave to the move- 
ment which ended in household suffrage being conferred 
on " our own flesh and blood," of the imperishable 
achievements of his ministry of 1868 in passing the Bal- 
lot Act and the Education Act, in abolishing purchase 
in the army, and, above all, in disestablishing the 
Church of Ireland and reforming in some measure the 
land laws of that unhappy country, what need to speak? 
To no Englishman of our time has it been given to 
perform such eminent service to his country and to 
mankind. His Radicalism, commencing to meander 
more than forty years ago among the stony uplands of 



12 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Toryism, is now, as the limit of life is approached, a 
majestic river, whose ample flood will never be stinted 
or stayed till it is lost in the ocean of eternity. 

At the general election of 1874 the British Philistine 
was fat, and kicked. The constituencies deliberately 
cried out, " Not this man, but Barabbas ! " Is it ne- 
cessary to add the emphatic, "Now, Barabbas was a 
robber"? But since then many things, as Earl Bea- 
consfield would say, have happened. The general elec- 
tion of 1880 reversed the verdict of 1874 with a deci- 
siveness that fairly astonished all parties. In opposi- 
tion, though no longer ostensible leader of the Liberal 
host, Mr. Gladstone had evinced a moral grandeur and 
an intellectual vigor never equalled b}^ any British states- 
man ; and on all hands he was felt to be the man of a 
very difficult situation, of which the end is not jet. 
In proportion as he succeeds or fails will be the nation' ^ 
gain or loss. In any case, if he has not done enough 
for humanity, — if he has still, as he says, a whole 
catalogue of "unredeemed pledges" to submit, — he 
has done enough, and more than enough, to enshrine his 
name imperishably in the hearts of all good men : — 

" His hfe was gentle; and the elements 
So mixed in Mm, that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, This was a ManI " 



11. 

JOHN BRIGHT. 

Thou art e'en as just a man 
As e'er my conversation coped witlial." 

THERE is a quaint- passage in " Ecclesiasticus '' 
wMch expresses better than any thing I can think 
of my conception of the way in which Mr. Bright will 
be regarded by a not distant posterity. " Let us praise 
famous men," it nms, " and our fathers that begat us. 
God hath wrought great glor}^ by them through His 
great power from the beginning ; men renowned for 
their power giving counsel by their understanding, and 
declaring prophecies ; leaders of the people by their 
counsels and by their knowledge meet for the people, 
wise and eloquent in their instructions ; rich men fur- 
nished with ability, living i^eaceabl}^ in their habita- 
tions." "All these," it is added, "were honored in 
their generations, and were the glory of their times." 
And, assuredly, if characteristics such as these apper- 
tain to any man of our day and generation, it is to 
John Bright. What leader of the people has given 
wiser counsel, more eloquent instruction, — nay, de- 
clared more prophecies ? As applied to him, the title of 
Right Honorable is, for a wonder, fully deserved. It 
fits like a glove. From the beginning of his career 
until now "great glory has been wrought by him," 

13 



14 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



and that, too, " through His great power," Mr. Bright 
would be the first to postulate. 

Least of all our public men is the illustrious tribune 
of the people an adventurer, self-seeker, or demagogue. 
I do not know that he can be described as a " rich ' ' 
man. ' ' Riches " is a specially comparative term in this 
aristocracy-ridden land ; but certainly the anti-corn 
law agitation found him a well-to-do man, "furnished 
with abilit}^, living peaceably in his habitation" at 
Rochdale, where he might have remained to this day 
hardly distinguishable from the mass of his fellow-citi- 
zens, had he not had what, in the phraseology of Puri- 
tanism, is named a "call." He was at the mill, as 
Elisha was at the plough, when the divine messenger 
laid hold of him in the guise of a gaunt, starving mul- 
titude, for whose wrongs he was imperatively com- 
manded to seek redress at the hands of a heartless and 
stupid legislature. The corn laws repealed, the hori- 
zon of his public duties widened ; but the spirit in which 
he has continued to act has remained the same. He is 
the great Puritan statesman of England, ever con- 
sciously living, as did his favorite poet Milton, " in his 
great Taskmaster's eye." This is the ke}^ to his sim- 
ple but grand character, as it is to that of the much 
more complex Gladstone, — a singular fact, certainly, 
in view of the grave doubts now entertained in so many 
not incompetent quarters with respect to the objective 
reality of all religious beliefs. 

Mr. Bright has completed his sixty-eighth year, hav- 
ing been born in 1811, in his father's house at Green- 
bank, near Rochdale. Needless to say his ancestors 
did not "come over at the Conquest." So far as is 
known, there is not a single " de " among them. The 



JOHN BRIGHT. 15 

jBrst discoverable local habitation of tbe Brights is a 
place still called " Bright' s Farm," near Lyneham, in 
Wiltshire. Here, in 1714, a certain Abraham Bright 
married Martha Jacobs, a handsome Jewess ; and 
shortly afterwards the couple removed to Coventry, 
where Abraham begat William Bright, who begat 
Jacob, who begat Jacob junior, who, coming to Eoch- 
dale in 1796, was espoused to Martha Wood, the 
daughter of a respectable tradesman of Bolton-le- 
Moors, and became in due course the father of John 
the Great, the subject of this sketch. 

Mr. Bright 's ancestry abounds in Abrahams and 
Jacobs, Marthas and Marys. He has a sort of vested 
interest in scriptural characters and scriptural knowl- 
edge, which comes as instinctively to him as fox-hunting 
to a squire of the county. He is a hereditary Noncon- 
formist ; nearl}?- all his relatives, as is well known, being 
members of the Society of Friends. He may be said 
to have been born resisting church rates. His father, 
a most estimable man, could never be induced to pay 
them, and was, in consequence, as familiar with execu- 
tion warrants as with the pages of his ledger. Not a 
bad example, assured^, for a youthful people's tribune ! 
Bright the elder had started life as a poor but honest 
weaver, working, as his right honorable son has told all 
the world, for six shillings a week ! In 1809 he took 
an old mill named Greenbank. Some Manchester 
friends who had confidence in his intelligence and integ- 
' rity supplied the capital ; and, hj the time that the ex- 
President of the Board of Trade had attained years of 
discretion, the famity were in easy circumstances. The 
business has since been much developed ; but the knowl- 
edge that Mr. Bright, from the first, possessed a sub- 



16 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



m 



stantial "stake in the country," has given a cogency 
to his more Radical and humanitarian opinions in the 
eyes of the middle class, which no amount of mere 
argument could have ever supplied. 

Was Mr. Bright equally happy in his education? 
The question is one of great difficulty ; but, on the 
whole, I am disposed to think he was. True, he did not 
learn much at the Friends' schools which he frequented ; 
but, on the other hand, — unlike Mr. Gladstone, with 
his great academic acquirements, — he learned noth- 
ing which it has been necessary for him, by a pain- 
ful process, to unlearn. If, lilve Shakespeare, he 
" knows little Latin and less Greek," he knows uncom- 
monly well how to do without them. At the Ackworth 
and York schools his heart was cultivated, if his head 
was not crammed. The foundations were laid deep 
and strong of a placid, free, wise, and upright man- 
hood. "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." It 
was the educational aim of the friends of Bright 's 
childhood to instil wisdom first, and to leave knowl- 
edge pretty much to take care of itself. I do not like 
to contemplate what might have happened to Mr. Bright 
if he had gone to Eton and to Oxford with Mr. Glad- 
stone, and drunk in all the pernicious ecclesiastical and 
political nonsense which the Premier imbibed in his mis- 
directed youth. Mr. Gladstone has survived Oxford, 
and come out clothed and in his right mind ; but it is 
highly doubtful if Mr. Bright would have been equally 
fortunate. He is by temperament a Conservative, who 
has been singularly faithful to all the ideas with which 
he stai'ted in life. What he is to-daj^ he was forty-five 
years ago. His principles are far-reaching, and suscep- 
tible of varied application ; but I ventm-e to affirm, 



JOHN BEIGHT. 17 

that, if they were once realized, he would be about the 
last man in England to find new ones. He is the incar- 
nation of Quakerism, summing up in his own person all 
its noble law and all its prophets. The sect which has 
been numerically so weak and morallj-^ so strong will 
never produce another such. Its theory of the public 
good, though perhaps the highest of any, is limited 
after all. 

One part of Mr. Bright 's education which was not 
neglected, and which has been to him from boyhood a 
source of real inspiration, I ought not to overlook ; viz., 
his study of the great poets. He has a genius for ap- 
propriate quotation ; and, if I might give a hint to my 
young readers, let me recommend them to verify, as oc- 
casion offers, the sources from which he draws. They 
will be well repaid for the trouble. 

Like most generous and humane natures, he is fond 
of the lower animals, more especially of dogs ; but his 
canine, I am sorry to say, are not equal to his unerring 
poetic, instincts. In this respect he is not much above 
the shockingly low average taste of Lancashire. In 
his youth he was a good football-player, a smart crick- 
eter, an expert swimmer, and during a period of con- 
valescence, more than twenty years ago, he acquired 
the art of salmon-fishing, which he has since, for rec- 
reative reasons chiefly, brought to considerable perfec- 
tion. He is a total abstainer ; and what with a steady 
hand, a quick eye, and indomitable patience, few better 
amateur anglers appear on the Spey. 

He is a charming companion, with a weakness for 
strolling into billiard-rooms. Once at Llandudno, the 
story goes, he played in a public billiard-room with a 
stranger, who turned out to be a truculent Tory manu- 



18 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

facturer from Yorkshire. While the game was proceed- 
ing, the Yorkshireman's wife chanced to ask some of 
the hotel attendants how her husband was engaged, 
and was beside herself with alarm on learning that he 
was in the company of one against whom she had so 
often heard him express the most bloodthirsty senti- 
ments. "Are they fighting?" she asked, and could 
with difficulty be pursuaded that no altercation was 
going on. About a couple of hours afterwards the hus- 
band turned up, rubbing his hands, and told his wife 
with much satisfaction that he had just been having a 
game at billiards with a most pleasant casual acquaint- 
ance, and that they had arranged for another trial of 
skill next day. "Why," exclaimed the lady, "it is 
John Bright you have been playing with ! ' ' The 
manufacturer's countenance fell ; but, speedily recover- 
ing himself, he observed, in extenuation of his conduct, 
that the newspapers always told lies about people, and, 
so thoroughly was he now satisfied of Mr. Bright 's 
entire harmlessness, that, in given circumstances, he 
should vote for him himself. 

At home, at One Ash, Mr. Bright enjoj^s universal 
respect. His abode, though most unostentatious, is a 
model of comfort and good taste. His library is note- 
worthy, being specially rich in history, biography, and 
poetry. At the close of the corn-law agitation up- 
wards of twenty-five thousand dollars were subscribed 
by his admirers, and twelve hundred volumes purchased 
therewith, as some slight acknowledgment of his pow- 
erful advocacy of the good cause. As of yore, he 
regularly attends the services at the humble meeting- 
house of the Friends ; and, as age advances, the sources 
of his piety show no symptom of drying up. His 
charities, and — 



JOHN BEIGHT. 19 

" That best portion of a good man's life, 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love," 

which are in reality numerous, are seldom recorded, 
because Mr. Bright, like his father before him, declines 
to blow a trumpet when he does a good deed. He acts 
on the principle of not letting his right hand know 
what his left hand doeth in such matters ; and, as a 
consequence, his benefactions are better known to the 
beneficiaries than to the public. 

As to Mr. Bright 's relations with his work-people, 
many lying legends were at one time circulated by the 
Tory press. They practically, however, received their 
quietus on the 25th of January, 1867, when the alleged 
victims of Mr. Bright 's tyranny met and unanimously 
passed resolutions so complunentary to their employer, 
that for shame's cause the Conservative organs had to 
look about for fresh subjects of vilification. At that 
time Mr. Bright was able to say, " From 1809 to 1867 
is at least fifty-seven years ; and I venture to affirm, 
that with one single exception, and that not of long 
duration, there has been during that period uninter- 
rupted harmony and confidence between my family and 
those who have assisted us and been employed in it." 
How few employers in this age of ' ' strikes ' ' can say 
as much ! 

With respect to Mr. Bright' s oratory, I agree with all 
competent judges that it is as nearly as possible per- 
fect. He is the prince of English speakers. I have 
been told by some authorities who have heard Wendell 
Phillips speak, that he is equal to Mr. Bright ; but, 
from speeches by the celebrated American which I have 
read, I should very much doubt it. The heart, the 



20 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

conscience, the intellect, Mr. Bright can touch with 
equal ease. His speech is the natural expression of a 
mind at once beautiful and strong. The whole man 
speaks, and not, as is the case with most other speak- 
ers, only a part of him. His words glide like a pleas- 
ant brook, without haste and without rest. His rising 
in the House is always an event. I remember by 
chance being in the Speaker's Gallery on a Wednesday 
afternoon when he made his now celebrated speech on 
the Burials Bill. He had seldom spoken since his 
severe illness, and was not expected to address the 
House. The debate had been of the poorest select 
vestry stamp, without abilit}^ and without human inter- 
est of any kind, when suddenly a movement of expec- 
tation was visible on both sides of the House : — 

*' And hark! the cry is, ' Astur!' and lo! the ranks divide, 
And the great lord of Luna comes with his stately stride. 
Upon his ample shoulders clangs loud the fourfold shield. 
And in his hand he shakes the brand which none save he 
can wield." 

The effect was magical. Languid and recumbent 
legislators sat erect, and were all attention in a mo- 
ment. It was curious to observe how the occupants 
of the Conservative benches, the majority of whom in 
the late Parliament looked for all the world like a band 
of horse-jockej^s and prize-fighters, were affected. Mr. 
Bright talked to them with all the simplicity and confi- 
dence of a good paterfamilias addressing his family 
circle with his back to his own mantel-piece. And such 
talk ! No wonder that they listened with silent re- 
spect. The whole House was transformed by it, and 
began to feel something lilie a proper sense of its own 
duty and dignity. Before he had spoken five minutes, 



JOHN BRIGHT. 21 

the level of the debate had been raised fifty degrees 
at least ; and there was not an honorable, nor, for the 
matter of that, a dishonorable, member present who 
did not feel that the Government was morally and logi- 
cally routed, whatever its numerical triumph might be. 

Mr. Bright does one thing of which so many mem- 
bers are oblivious : he never in any of his speeches in 
Parliament forgets that he is in the great council of the 
nation ; and, however violent may be the supposition, 
he always assumes that his opponents are there to be 
convinced, if only the matter at issue is put in a proper 
light. The prevailing tone of his mind is one of hope- 
fulness. He has large faith, and believes in the inevi- 
table progress of humanity and the ultimate invinci- 
bility of truth. As he once said, "There is much 
shower and sunshine between the sowing of the seed 
and the reaping of the harvest ; but the harvest is 
reaped after all." 

But, though his nature is large and forgiving, in sol- 
emn earnestness of rebuke he is unmatched. Once or 
twice Lord Palmerston, in the very height of his power 
and popularity, was made to wince like a convict under 
the sentence of a judge ; and, if we except the unique 
moral insensibility of a Beaconsfield, it would be diffi- 
cult to conceive of a more arduous undertaking than 
that of reaching the conscience of Lord Palmerston. 

In the terrible struggle which threatened to rend the 
great American Eepublic to pieces, the innermost soul 
of the tribune of the people was stirred within him, and 
he touched the limits of actual prophec}^ In the dark- 
est hour of the fortunes of the North he declared, ' ' The 
Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone) as a 
speaker is not surpassed by any man in England, and 



22 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

he is a great statesman. He believes the cause of the 
North to be hopeless, and that their enterprise cannot 
succeed. ... I have another and a far brighter vision 
before my gaze. It may be a vision ; but I will cherish 
it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the 
frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, 
and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to 
the calmer waters of the Pacific main ; and I see one 
people and one language, and one law and one faith, 
and over all that wide continent the home of freedom 
and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of 
every clime." 

It remains to notice, however briefly, some of the 
more noticeable events of Mr. Bright's public life. 
They have not been so numerous as might, on first 
thoughts, be supposed : for he has all his dsijs been a 
sower of seed, and not a reaper ; and, of much that he 
has sown, future generations will reap the fruit. His 
" record " will be best found in his collected speeches, 
which are, in my opinion, the finest in the language, 
whether as regards matter or diction. I know no poli- 
tician who has been more uniformly in the right when 
others have been in the wrong, and I know no greater 
master of the English tongue. 

His first public appearance was made at Rochdale, in 
1830, in his nineteenth year. It was in favor of tem- 
perance, and is said to have been a success. Like 
most young speakers, he commenced b}^ committing to 
memory what he intended to utter on the platform, but 
soon abandoned so clumsy and exhaustive a method of 
address. Instead of memoriter reproductions, he held 
impromptu rehearsals at odd hours in his father's mill 
before Mr. Nicholas NuttaU, an intelligent workman 



JOHN BEIGHT. 23 

and unsparing critic ; but even now his perorations are 
written out with the greatest care. Like most young 
men in easy circumstances, he had a desire for travel, 
which was gratified by a visit to Jerusalem. On coming 
within sight of the Holy City, he was melted to tears. 

In the month of October, 1838, the Anti-Corn Law 
League had its insignificant and unpromising beginning. 
Five Scotsmen, — W. A. Cunningham, Andrew Dalzell, 
James Leslie, Archibald Prentis, and Philip Thomson, 
residents in Manchester, — along with William Rawson, 
a native of the town, met like the apostles of old, in an 
" upper room," and decreed the origin of the mammoth 
association. In the printed list of the members of the 
provisional committee Mr. Bright 's name stands sec- 
ond. He had found his vocation ; and, in the course of 
the memorable campaign that followed, he and the late 
Mr. Cobden contracted a friendship which has justly 
become historic. In speaking in the House of Mr. 
Cobden 's decease, the strong man, bowed down with 
the weight of his sorrow, was barel}^ able to utter, 
' ' After twenty years of most intimate and almost 
brotherly friendship with him, I little kfiew how much 
I loved him until I found that I had lost him." Siste^ 
viator ! 

In 1843 Mr. Bright first took his seat in Parliament 
for Dm"ham, and in 1847 he was returned for Man- 
chester without opposition. In 1852 he was re-elected 
after a contest ; but at the subsequent general election 
of 1857 he lost his seat on account of his unbending 
opposition to the Crimean war, and to the swagger of 
Palmerston in China. In the autumn of the same year, 
however, he was returned by Birmingham at a by- 
election, and has continued to represent the great 
Radical Mecca in Parliament ever since. 



24 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



His memorable defeat at Manchester was, for him, 
the gi'eatest moral victory of his life, and he has had 
many. With a sublime courage, which has never been 
surpassed, he strove almost single-handed to arrest in 
its mad career a whole nation in pursuit of a mischiev- 
ous phantom. In the American war his services to his 
own country and to America were unrivalled, and 
happily more successful. 

That he is one of the best and most intelligent 
friends of India, of Ireland, and of the unenfranchised 
and unprivileged masses of Englishmen and Scotsmen 
will go without saying. As a member of Mr. Glad- 
stone's cabinet he was introduced at court, and is said 
to be a favorite there. I should have lilted him better 
had he continued — to use his own words — "to abide 
among his own people." Evil communications have a 
tendency to corrupt the best manners, and Mr. Bright 
has never been at his best since he made the acquaint- 
ance of royalty. 

Latterly the brunt of the fighting has fallen on Glad- 
stone, who, by an arduous heart-searching process, has, 
at seventy, reached conceptions of the public good 
which were familiar to Mr. Bright's mind at twent}^ 
It is Mr. Bright's turn to put his powerful hand to the 
plough. He looks vigorous as ever, and it has not 
been his wont to spare himself in great emergencies. 
Let him remember the wisdom of Ulysses addressed to 
the " great and godlike " Achilles, — 

" To have done, 
Is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, 
In monumental mockery." 



I 



III. 

PETER ALFRED TAYLOR. 

"And I have walked with Hampden and with Vane, 
Names once so gracious in an English ear." 

HAVING- now portrayed, however imperfectly, our 
two most illustrious Radical statesmen, — Mr. 
Glaclffto-- -^nd Mr. Bright, I come to deal with one 
who is not a statesmaxi, - ^-^^o- makes no prptc-r.':.ii lo 
statesmanship, — but who, as a politician, has never- 
theless ' ' been fashioned unto much honor. ' ' His name 
will not be found, I think, even among that multitude 
which no man can number, the " Men of the Times." 
Nor is the omission so culpable as may at first sight 
appear ; for Mr. P. A. Tajdor belongs at once to the 
Radical past and the Radical future rather than to 
the opportunist present. He is the most unique figure 
in the House of Commons, — a man who, in the daj^s of 
the Long Parliament, would have been after gentle 
Lucy Hutchinson's own republican heart, and who, in 
those of Queen Victoria, has been best appreciated by 
such gifted pioneers of progress as Mazzini and Mill. 
He hks now represented Leicester in Parliament for 
eighteen years, and all that time he has neither led nor 
followed, — neither been misled by the leaders of his 
party, nor been found following the multitude to do 
evil. If he has led at any time, it has been as the 

25 



26 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PABLIAMENT. 

captain of forlorn hopes, the champion of forgotten 
rights, the redresser of unheeded wrongs. He is the 
Incorruptible of the House. In evil and in good report 
he has striven to subject every issue that has presented 
itself to the test of general principles of human well- 
being. 

I am not now considering whether he has been uni- 
foi-mly right in particular deductions from thes^ prin- 
ciples : he may, or he may not. All I say is, that he 
has been uniformly true to his principles from his youth 
up. They alone have been his leaders. Of " doctrines 
fashioned to the varying hour," he has known nothing, 
and, from the constitution of his mind, will never know. 

Mr. Taylor is generally considered aT» ^^o^i~^ir^ 
nieni1)fe?jJ??-t^^^ eccentrjcity is wholly on the surface. 
Once understand his principles, or rather solitary prin- 
ciple of action, —viz., that liberty, liberty, liberty, is 
the best of all things in all things political, religious, 
social, or commercial, — and the course which the 
senior member for Leicester will pursue on any given 
question may be predicted almost with mathematical 

certainty. 

I always remember a curiously instructive telegraphic 
summary of a speech delivered by Mr. Taylor to his 
constituents about the time of the republican agitation 
in 1870. It was a model of compression ; but it illus- 
trates admirably what I have been saying. It appeared 
among other items of " election news," and ran thus : 
" Mr. P. A. Tajdor, the member for Leicester, ad- 
di-essed his constituents last night. He declared for 
the republic and against the Permissive Bill." I don't 
know whether the intelligent reporter saw any kony in 
the juxtaposition into which the republic and the Per- 



PETER ALFRED TAYLOR. 27 

missive Bill were thus brought; but sure I am that 
Mr. Taylor would have recognized none. According 
to his views, the one was in favor of, the other in oppo- 
sition to, liberty. Hence his support and his antago- 
nism. Both flowed naturally from the same source, — 
a source at once of strong personal conviction and 
ancestral pride. 

It may appear somewhat strange to attribute ances- 
tral pride to an out-and-out democrat like Mr. Taylor ; 
but it is impossible fully to understand his character 
without taking the markedly liberal tendencies of his 
forefathers, both in politics and religion, into account. 
Mr. Taylor may be described as a hereditary Radical of 
two and a half centuries standing. 

The pseudo-science of heraldry is coming to have 
an unexpected value as an aid to the study of the 
laws of heredity. Mental, like physical characteristics, 
are shown to persist and recur from generation to 
generation, contrary to all our preconceived notions 
of the determining causes of the opinions of indi- 
viduals and the way in which they are formed. The 
acquisition of riches is vulgarly supposed to make the 
best of Radicals Conservatives. Self-interest, it is 
held, induces them instinctively to throw in their lot 
with the privileged classes ; but the history of some of 
the most respectable and well-to-do families in England 
proves the very opposite. The instinct in favor of 
progress may fail for a generation ; but it soon re- 
appears. 

Mr. Taylor's genealogy'' is in itself a standing refuta- 
tion of ordinarily accepted theories. The name is 
distinctly of plebeian origin ; but, as early as the reign 
of Edward III., Mr. Taylor's progenitors possessed 



28 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

large estates in Huntingdonshire. They " bore arms " 
of course ; and evidently with the desire, if possible, to 
aristocratize their name, they called themselves Tay- 
lards. And this continued to be the spelling till the 
close of the sixteenth century, when the patronymic 
was restored to the more ancient plebeian form by an 
irate Taylard who considered that he had had enough 
of aristocracy. The head of the family had died, leav- 
ing a pregnant wife behind him, and a wUl which inten- 
tionally or otherwise omitted the normal word " male." 
A girl was born ; and an astute gentleman, named 
Brudenell, who afterwards became Earl of Cardigan, 
married the heiress and her estates in her fourteenth 
year. The Tajdards took the matter into chancery, 
but failed to secure the succession ; and, being greatly 
impoverished, their chief representative came to Lon- 
don, and established himself on the spot where Messrs. 
Longmans' well-known publishing-house now stands as 
plain "Mr. Taylor, Haberdasher." 

He prospered in business, and was a stanch sup- 
porter of the Commonwealth, which rewarded his zeal 
by several important appointments. He was a warm 
friend of the regicides, and added to his political mis- 
conduct religious heresy. He ably defended the noted 
Socinian preacher of the day, Goodwin. 

At the Restoration, William Taylor, son of this re- 
publican haberdasher, was pardoned by Charles II. for 
his father's manifold offences on the pa^Tnent of a 
heav;y^ fine, — pardoned (he was but fourteen !) "'for all 
manners of treacheries, crimes, treasons, misprisions, 
... all and singular murders." 

Passing rapidly down the stream of time, we come to 
the Rev. Henry Taj'lor of Portsmouth, who matricu- 



PETER ALFRED TAYLOR. 29 

lated at Cambridge University in 1729. He is better 
known as Ben Mordecai, from the production of a very 
clever book entitled "The Apology of Benjamin Ben 
Mordecai for embracing Christianity." He possessed 
all the family characteristics in an eminent degree. In 
religion he was an Arian and a Universalist, and neither 
menace nor persuasion could ever induce him to read 
the Athanasian Creed from his pulpit. He tried hard 
to get the Prayer Book reformed, and all but succeeded 
in procuring the objects for w&h Broad Churchmen 
still sigh. He denounced the game-laws, and would 
not turn on his heel to be introduced to royalty when it 
came in his way. Albeit a churchman, he was in all 
respects the prototype of the honorable member for 
Leicester, — Radical in politics as in religion, with a 
caustic vein of drollery, of which the following extract 
from a circular to the clergy, found among his papers, 
may serve as a specimen. It reminds one forcibly of 
Mr. Taj^lor's own very clever contribution to the " Pen 
and Pencil Club," styled "Realities." It is fittingly 
labelled " Impudent," and begins : " One hundred and 
fifty sermons, such as are greatly admired and are but 
little known, engraved in a masterly running-hand, 
printed on stout writing-paper, and made to resemble 
manuscript as nearly as possible ; in length from 
twent}^ to twenty-five minutes, as pithy as possible, 
intelligible to every understanding, and as fit to be 
preached to a polite as to a country congregation," &c. 
Nor is Mr. Taylor descended from a Radical stock on 
the paternal side alone. His maternal grandfather was 
George Courtauld, who travelled much on philanthropic 
missions in America, and was the fast friend of Dr. 
Priestley and Thomas Paine. The first of the Court- 



80 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PAELIAMENT. 

aulds is said in infancy to have been smuggled to Eng- 
land in a pannier by his Huguenot guardians at the 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Not only was 
George Courtauld a zealous- Unitarian, but his political 
sympathies appear also to have been republican. Writ- 
ing from America to a relative in England, he shrewdly 
remarks, " I cannot but think with Mr. Paine that you 
have no constitution. You have, indeed, a form of 
government ; but how you came by that it is very diffi- 
cult to say, — certainly it was not that form which, af- 
ter mature deliberation, the people of England chose for 
themselves." 

Within the last few years Lord Beaconsfield has de- 
monstrated to all whom it may concern that Mr. Tay- 
lor's grandfather and Mr. Paine were not far wrong in 
divining that the English people have ' ' no constitu- 
tion," only "a form of government," which, in the 
hands of a despotic Minister, may be twisted into the 
most dangerous imperialistic shape. " Our glorious 
constitution " is a political imposture and superstition 
which the member for Leicester, the descendant of such 
a clear-sighted race of iconoclasts, can hardly be ex- 
pected to swallow without protest. 

Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P., was born in London in 
1819. He is the eldest son of Peter Alfred Taylor, of 
the old and highl}' respected firm of Courtauld, Taylor, 
& Courtauld, siDv-manufacturers, Bocking, Braintree, 
Halstead. He was educated in the first instance at the 
Unitarian school at Brighton, then taught by the Rev. 
J. P. Malleson. At fourteen years of age he was re- 
moved to London, and for a short time he attended 
University College. 

Of the Unitarians, as a sect, it has been wittily said, 



PETEE ALFRED TAYLOR. 31 

that, if they can only see their way to believe in one 
God, they invariably pay twenty shillings in the pound. 
The J are an eminently rational, upright, and progres- 
sive people ; and politically their services to the country 
have been invaluable. In all respects Mr. Taylor's 
educational and social advantages were of the most en- 
viable kind. His father was an ardent opponent of the 
corn laws, of church rates, and of a limited franchise. 
The friends of Mr. Taylor's youth were reformers of the 
highest intellectual grasp, including Mill, Mazzini, Col. 
Perronet Thomson, and Ebenezer Elliot, the corn-law 
rhymer. 

The man, however, to whom Mr. Taylor owed most 
was the celebrated W. J. Fox, the minister of South- 
place Chapel, Finsbmy, where the Taylors, father and 
son, attended for many years. Mr. Fox was a preach- 
er of extraordinary talent and energy. From being the 
"Norwich Weaver-Boy," he became simultaneously 
minister of the most intellectual congregation in the 
metropolis, member of Parliament for Oldham ; and last, 
not least, he wielded the powerful pen of " Publicola '* 
in " The Weekly Dispatch." After his death, Mr. 
Taylor, in one of the best speeches he ever delivered, 
said of him, with much truth, "• His political principles 
were not so weakly based that he feared to trace the 
result in the history of various kinds of government ; 
nor his religion so poorly grounded as to fear scientific 
inquiry. He searched after truth, and followed wher- 
ever it might lead him." In portraying Fox's virtues, 
Mr. Taylor described the leading features of his own 
mind. 

Very early in life Mr. Taylor entered his father's 
business, for which he showed aptitude of the highest 



32 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

order, and by 1866 he was able to retire from the firm 
with a handsome competency. This fact is all the 
more gratifying that for upwards of twenty years previ- 
ously he had been giving up much of his time to the 
public service. 

In quitting connection with the firm, Mr. Taylor ad- 
dressed a characteristic circular to all the employes. 
" My friends," it said among other things, " with the 
close of the old year has ceased, as you all probably are 
aware, my connection with the business, and therefore 
with 3^ou. I cannot let such a connection cease with- 
out just one word of kindly farewell, of hearty good 
wishes. In wishing you farewell, I reflect with satisfac- 
tion that the name of Taylor will still be represented in 
the house by my brother. Finally, let me say, that, 
should my name ever reach you in connection with any 
question of public interest, I can promise beforehand 
that it will only be on the side ever upheld by my fa- 
ther before me, — that, viz., of justice for all, and of 
political enfranchisement for the working- classes." 

In Parliament Mr. Taylor is rapt and solitary, living 
in the world of his own ideas. Nevertheless, his sin- 
gleness of purpose, accuracy of statement, genuine 
humor, originality of ideas, and clear, effective speak- 
ing never fail to secure for him a respectful hearing, 
however distasteful may be the subject of his address. 

At home he is a delightful host, an inveterate joker of 
jokes. His wife, a lady of great accomplishments, is 
hardly behind him in zeal for the public good. Every 
post brings heaps of letters from aggrieved subjects of 
her Majesty in all parts of the world. They are all 
carefully considered, and parliamentary or extra-parlia- 
mentary redress invoked, according to circumstances. 



PETER ALFRED TAYLOR. 33 

In his capacity of redresser-general of unheeded wrongs 
and oppressions, Mr. Taylor has quite a business to 
attend to ; and in this character have some of his great- 
est senatorial successes been achieved. 

He is the terror of the " great unpaid," whose cruel 
antics throughout rural England he has done much to 
curb. Every day "justices' justice " is more of a by- 
word and a reproach. He has striven hard to remove 
the inequalities of Sunday legislation ; and the poor of 
London in partfcular owe him a debt of gratitude for 
taking the sting out of the great harasser of their lives, 
that too " busy bee," Bee Wright. It is but the other 
day that Mr. Taylor, at a cost of more than ten thou- 
sand dollars, presented the workingmen of Brighton 
with a People's Club, which will secure to them on Sun- 
days something like the advantages of a local Carlton 
or Reform. 

In the attempt to bring General Eyre to justice, he 
was hardly less active than Mr. Mill. 

The " cat," he has satisfied all humane minds, is 
twice accursed, — cursing him that administers, and hun 
to whom it is administered. 

The game-laws he has had the courage to expose in 
all their naked infamy to a country stiil held tight in the 
vice of feudalism. 

He has been one of three in resisting the spoliation 
of the exchequer by royal princes and princesses ; and 
the most important perhaps of all future parliamentary 
reforms — the paj^ment of members — he has made 
peculiarly his own. His speech on the latter subject is 
one of the most convincing ever delivered by him or 
any other living member of the House. 

As president of the ' ' People ' s International League , ' ' 



34 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Taylor in his younger days was untiring in his 
endeavors to liberate Poland, Hungary, and Italy from 
the oppressor's grasp. By voice, pen, and purse, he 
did his best for the popular cause. 

The only conspicuous blunder of his life was his 
advocacy of the Crimean war in opposition to Cobden 
and Bright. The wrongs of Poland rankled in his 
breast and blinded his judgment, as it fatally darkened 
the understanding of so many other true friends of free- 
dom. In the American civil war, needless to say, his 
S3'mpathies were entirely with the North and the policy 
of abolition, of which he had long been a strenuous 
advocate. 

In America the name of P. A. Taylor is perhaps 
as well known as in England, and it will be better 
known to posteritj?^ than to his contemporaries. Nor 
is this to be wondered at ; for in this royalty and aris- 
tocracy ridden land the member for Leicester is a " rare ' ' 
figure, and precious as he is rare. He is, in a sense, a 
" survival " from the great era of the Commonwealth, — 
a mind of the type of Vane, Ludlow, Hutchinson, 
Scott, and Hazelrig, — an idealist in politics, but withal 
a practical idealist. He is more human than English, 
his principles being more or less applicable to all times 
and^ to all places. Having embraced a principle, he 
holds to it with the tenacity of a buU-dog, fearlessly 
pushing it to its remotest consequences. 

This was the distinguishing mental characteristic of 
all the great republicans of the seventeenth century. 
Since then an extraordinary blight has fallen on the 
political intelligence of Englishmen. The}^ waste their 
best intellect in the defence of palpable anomalies and 
pernicious compromises. Even Gladstone and Bright 



PETER ALFEED TAYLOE. 35 

have not escaped the contagion of compromise. They 
go to court, and are caught in the net of "society," 
which sticks to them like a Nessus shirt. Peter Alfred 
Taylor has never been caught. He has gone to no 
court but that of the sovereign people. I honor the 
man and the constituency which has so long honored 
itself by honoring him. 

" Stainless soldier on the walls, 

Knowing this and knows no more, — 
Whoever fights, whoever falls, 

Justice conquers evermore; 
And he who battles on her side, 

God, if he were ten times slain, 
Crowns him victor glorified, — 

Victor over death and pain." 



IV. 

Sm CHARLES W. DILKE. 

"A greyhound ever on the stretch 
To run for honor still." 

IN treating of Gladstone, Bright, and Taylor, who 
have preceded the senior member for Chelsea in 
this series, I have in some measure felt on sure 
ground, — the ground of history or accomplished fact. 
The 3^oungest of the above trio is sixty, and had 
entered the arena of public life ere the subject of this 
memoir had well left his cradle. One could, conse- 
quently, speak of them almost with as much confidence 
as of the dead. Their lengthened past was a clear 
index to their necessarily briefer future. In due course 
they will pass over to the majority, and the places that 
know them now will know them no more. With Sir 
Charles Wentworth Dillie it is altogether different. 
He belongs exclusively to the immediate present. It 
will take him thh-ty-five more j'^ears to attain the ven- 
erable age of the woodcutter of Hawarden. He is 
emphatically a contemporar}^, as fine an example as 
can well be found of the culture and aspirations of this 
generation. It is his future that is most important, 
and it is full of promise. 

As Mr. Gladstone in his youth was pronounced " the 
rising hope of Toryism," so Sir Charles W. Dillve may 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 37 

with better assurance be hailed as the rising hope of 
Radicalism, — of all that is sincere, capable, and of 
good repute in English politics. The odds are heavily 
in his favor. He has youth, health, wealth, birth, 
strength, talent, industry, firmness of character, spe- 
cial training, and moral courage of a very high order 
on his side. Such a combination of advantages sel- 
dom fails. If he is spared to his country for the next 
twenty years, he will almost certainly be able to say 
with regard to her fortunes, whatever these may be. 
Magna pars fui. " Never prophes;^," said the wise 
Quaker, "unless thou knowest ! " Nevertheless, I 
venture to predict, that, sooner or later, Charles "VYent- 
worth Dilke will be called upon by the people of Eng- 
land to take a very high place, — it may be the highest, 
— and he will succeed, too, by the right of the fittest. 
Like his friend Gambetta, he has been tried in the fiery 
furnace of political calumny and social hate, and has 
not been found wanting. "Society" undertook to 
put him down, and he has put down society. Of the 
two he has proved himself the stronger, and a better 
proof of capacity to serve the nation it would be 
impossible to adduce. 

" That which is bred in the bone," says the proverb, 
"will come out in the flesh." The anti-monarchical 
sympathies of the Dillies, like those of the Taylors, are 
at least as much inherited as acquired. No fewer than 
three of the Dilke ancestry were among the judges of 
Charles I. ; viz., the resolute Bradshaw, who presided 
over the High Court of Justice, Sir Peter Wentworth, 
and Cawley. All were stern foes of " one-man govern- 
ment," whether that one man were the " divine right " 
Charles Stuart, or the Puritan Bonaparte, Oliver Crom- 



38 ElVnNENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

well. " For what king's majesty," asks the immortal 
defender of the regicides, Milton, " sitting on an ex- 
alted throne ever shone so brightly as that of the people 
of England then did, when, shaking off that old super- 
stition which had prevailed a long time, they gave judg- 
ment on the king himself, or rather upon an enemy 
who had been their king, caught, as it were, in a net 
by his own laws, and scrupled not to inflict on him, 
being guilty, the same punishment which he would have 
inflicted on any other? . . . This is the God," he 
continues, " who uses to throw down proud and unruly 
kings . . . and 'utterly to extirpate them and their 
family. By his manifest impulse being set at work to 
recover oiu* almost lost liberty, we went on in no ob- 
scure but an illustrious passage pointed out and made 
plain to us by God himself. ' ' 

At his trial Charles vainly declined to recognize the 
authority of the court, on the silly pretext that he him- 
self was " the fountain of all law." " If you are the 
fountain of all law," curtly observed Bradshaw, "the 
people are the source of all rights." When the Crom- 
wellian coup d'etat took place. Sir Peter Wentworth 
was, I think, the last man in the House to protest 
against the violence offered to the representatives of 
the people ; and Bradshaw afterwards told the military 
usurper to his face, "We have heard what you did, 
and all England shall know it. Sir, you are mfstaken 
in thinking Parliament is dissolved. No power under 
heaven can dissolve them but themselves. Take you 
notice of that." 

One of Sir Peter Wentworth' s sisters was married 
to Bradshaw 's brother ; while another, Sybil Went- 
worth, became the wife of Fisher Dilke, from which 



SIR CHAELES W. DILKE. 39 

union the distinguished representative of Chelsea in 
Parliament is lineally descended. 

The Dilkes were probably of Danish origin, and are 
to be found settled at Kirby Mallory, in Leicestershke, 
as early as the middle of the sixteenth century. 

Fisher Dilke was a Puritan of the Puritans, much given 
to angling, and piety of an extravagant kind. He was 
a Fifth Monarchy man, and, like his sect, would have 
prepared the ways of King Christ, and made the paths 
of his speedy return straight by first abolishing all ex- 
isting authority and cancelling all bonds of human 
allegiance. He was doomed to sore disappointment. 
His co-sectaries mustered strong in Barebone's Parlia- 
ment, but in the eyes of the pious Lord Protector did 
no good whatever, though they never deliberated with-' 
out meanwhile setting apart a committee of eight of 
their number to seek the Lord in prayer. Their mit- 
timus came speedily from the Protector in the memo- 
rable words, " You may go elsewhere to seek the Lord, 
for to my certain knowledge he has not been here for 
many years." 

At the restoration of the monarchy Fisher Dilke is 
said to have died of sheer grief, having first dug his 
own grave. 

Of all Sir Charles's ancestors, however, the most 
remarkable was Peter Wentworth, the grandfather of 
Sybil, wife of Fisher Dilke, leader of the Puritan op- 
position in Parliament in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
and brother-in-law to the famous Secretary of State, 
Sir Francis Walsingham. This Peter and his brother 
Paul were seldom out of trouble. Hallam calls them 
"the bold, plain-spoken, and honest, but not very 
judicious Wentworths, the most undaunted assertors of 
civil liberty in his reign." 



40 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PAELIAMENT. 

In the Parliament of 1575 Peter made a stiff speech 
in defence of the rights and privileges of the Commons. 
It is on record. "I find," said he, "within a little 
volume these words in effect : ' Sweet is the name of 
libert}^, but the thing itself a value beyond all estimable 
treasure.' So much the more it behooveth us to take 
great care lest we, contenting om-selves with the sweet- 
ness of the name, lose and forego the thing. . . . Two 
things do great hurt in this place. The one is a rumor 
which runneth about sajdng, ' Take heed what you do : 
the queen liketh not such a matter. Whoso preferreth 
it she will be offended with him.' The other, a mes- 
sage is brought into the House either commanding or 
inhibiting, very injurious to the freedom of speech and 
consultation. I would to God these rumors and mes- 
sages were buried in hell ; for wicked they are : the 
Devil was the first author of them, from whom proceed- 
eth nothing but wickedness." 

And so on he went reprobating the venal flatterers 
of royalty who "make traitorous, sugared speeches," 
" send to her Majesty a melting heart that will not stand 
for reason," and who blindly follow their leaders instead 
of voting " as the matter giveth cause." 

Peter was not permitted to finish his speech, but was 
given into the custod}^ of the sergeant-at-arms, pending 
an examination of the delinquent by a committee of 
the House." 

His apology is recorded : " I heartily repent me that 
I have hitherto held my peace in these causes, and I do 
promise you all, if God forsake me not, that I wiU 
never during m}^ life hold my tongue if any message ts 
sent in wherein the liberties of Parliament are impeached ; 
and every one of you ought to repent you of these 
faults, and amend them." 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 41 

He was, of course, sent to the Tower, wliere he re- 
mained over a month, when "her Majesty was gra- 
ciously pleased to remit her justl}'^ occasioned displeas- 
ances." 

He returned to the House ; but in the following session 
he was recommitted for a similar offence. Indeed, he 
appears latterly to have spent more of his time in the 
Tower than at St. Stephen's ; and in the Tower the 
stout-hearted, liberty-loving man is believed ultimately 
to have perished. 

His plainness of speech had aroused against him 
more than royal ire. He and Paul were both at con- 
stant feud with the prelates. On one occasion the 
Archbishop of Canterbury announced, in the hearing 
of Peter, that it was the function of Parliament to pass 
articles of religion approved of by the clergy without 
note or comment. " No," said the indomitable icono- 
clast, " by the faith we bear to God, we will pass nothing 
before we understand what it is ; for that were but to 
make you popes. Make you popes who list, we will 
make you none." 

Through the member for Chelsea, Elizabethan Peter 
yet speaketh. And how modern is it all ! How little 
real progress have the English people made in liberty 
since these indignant words were uttered three centuries 
ago ! 'Nsij, may it not even be doubted whether in 
some respects we have not even lost ground ? Have we 
not stni bishops thrusting down our throats articles of 
religion which neither the}^ nor we can understand? 
Have we not likewise our royal " messages " respecting 
manifold dowries and annuities, duly heralded by sinis- 
ter " rumors " of royal " displeasance," which inconti- 
nently convert honorable members into a troop of com't 



42 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

flunkies, and make even Liberal Ministers deliver them- 
selves of " traitorous, sugared speeches," enough to 
make Peter and Paul Wentworth turn in their coffins ? 

"Age, thou art shamed! 
Eome, thou hast lost tlie breed of noble bloods ! 
Oh ! you and I have heard our fathers say 
There was a Brutus once, that would have brook' d 
The eternal devil to keep his state in Eome * 
As easily as a king." 

Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, M.P., is the eldest son 
of Sir Charles Wentworth Dillie, first baronet, and 
grandson of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the celebrated 
critic, whose literary judgment and administrative talent 
were the chief stock in trade both of ' ' The Athenaeum ' ' 
and " The Daily News " in their younger days. 

Sir Charles's father, as is well known, was much 
devoted to matters affecting art and industry, and was 
a leading promoter of the great Exhibition of 1851. 
As some acknowledgment of his eminent services, he 
was offered, and accepted, contrary to the advice of his 
father the critic, a baronetcy. The old gentleman was 
an inflexible Radical ; and Sir Charles may be said, in 
all his mental and moral characteristics, to be the son 
of his grandfather rather than of his father. He 
was the preceptor and companion of Dilke 's youth. 
He was an antiquary as well as a critic, and loved to 
trace the descent of grandson "Charley's" mother 
from the gentle and unselfish regicide Cawley as a noble 
pattern for her to set before her son. 

The future member for Chelsea was born in the 
borough which he now represents in September, 1843. 
He is consequently in his tMrty-seventh year. At the 
second of two private schools which he attended in the 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 43 

metropolis, he displayed mathematical talent ; and in 
due course he matriculated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 
with the intention of pursuing with assiduity his favor- 
ite study, in which he obtained a scholarship. He 
soon, however, changed his mind, and betook himself 
to law, as calculated to bear more directly on a parlia- 
mentary career, for which he very early determined to 
qualify himself. He worked hard, and was easily 
senior in the Law Tripos for 1865. 

In 1866 he was called to the bar by the Honorable 
Society of the Middle Temple. Shortly afterwards he 
started on a " round the world " journey of two years' 
duration. The trip bore excellent fruit in the well- 
known work "Greater Britain," which, in the first 
year of its publication, ran through four editions. 

In 1868 he was returned to Parliament for Chelsea 
by a majority of nearly two to one ; and again in 1874 
he headed the poll, notwithstanding an opposition of 
unexampled violence. 

Sprung from a race of journalists and litterateurs^ his 
pen is never long idle. Since the publication of 
' ' Greater Britain ' ' he has found time to publish the 
"Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco," and to edit, 
under the title " Papers of a Critic," his grandfather's 
.chief contributions to the pages of " The Athenaeum," 
which paper he owns and occasionally edits-. 

Since his former travels he has been ' ' round the 
world" a second time, his chief object being to ac- 
quaint himself with the state and prospects of Japan. 
He has visited every English-speaking corner of the 
globe, is thoroughly conversant with the condition of 
our Indian Empire, and is better acquainted with the 
language, literature, people, and government of Russia 
than any man in the House. 



44 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

He is perhaps the first thoroughly competent English- 
mau who has ever seen and described the men, manners, 
and institutions of the United States as they reall}^ are, 
and not as they are wont to appear to the jaundiced eye 
of national jealousy and aristocratic aversion. The 
American Republic is substantial!}^ Sii' Charles's 
" Greater Britain," to which he foresees the hegemony 
of the English-speaking race is ultimately destined to 
fall. He believes in the possibility of one omnipotent, 
all-embracing federation of English-speaking men, of 
which the United States shall at once supply both the 
nucleus and the model. 

In the study of foreign affairs he has taken nothing 
for granted. Every thing he has examined on the 
spot and verified with his own eyes. As Under-Secre- 
tary for Foreign Aff'airs, and mouthpiece of the Govern- 
ment in that department of state in the House of Com- 
mons, Sir Charles inspires universal confidence. 

Like Mr. Gladstone, he is an untiring toiler, and 
from the first he has worked on the most profitable 
lines. Whether as law-student, traveller, author, jour- 
nalist, or politician, whatever he has done, he has done 
faithfully and well. Ever}^ recess he shuns delights, 
and spends laborious holidays at his romantic pro- 
vincial retreat at La Sainte Campagne, near Toulon, 
in digesting materials for a magnum opus, " The His- 
tory of the Present Century." 

He is personally a total abstainer, though opposed to 
the Permissive Bill, and is in all things a pattern of 
method and regularity of habits. 

At Cambridge he was a finished oarsman. He is 
likewise a vigorous long-distance walker, a good marks- 
man, and a deft fencer. 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 45 

In nothing has he shown such marked improvement 
as in liis style of public speaking. Though twice pres- 
ident of the Union Debating Society at Cambridge, he 
was at first a most unimpressive speaker : I hesitate to 
use his own term, " lugubrious." But now it is not so. 
He is fluent, easy, and agreeable, — one of the best 
level business speakers in Parliament. As for the mat- 
ter, that has at all times been such as to redeem the 
worst faults of manner ; just a little too much of it at 
a time, perhaps, — more, at least, than can be well 
digested by a mass meeting even of Chelsea electors, — 
but not one word in bad taste, " nothing extenuated, 
nothing set down in malice." 

When he has been reviled, — and who ever was more 
villanously overwhelmed by a hurricane of abuse ? — he 
reviled not again. Like the soul of honor that he is, 
he has never stooped to personal invective. Under the 
severest provocation he has said nothing to wound the 
susceptibilities of the most sensitive. In this respect 
he has set an example to some of our foremost public 
men. Comes this extraordinary forbearance of grace 
or of nature? it may be asked. By nature, I should 
say. To him opposition from men or things is of 
exactly the same character. It is something to be 
overcome by patience and pressure in the line of the 
least resistance. In other words, the member for 
Chelsea is lacking in sympathy. He is fitted to be- 
come a great parliamentary leader rather than a popu- 
lar agitator. His political aims, it is true, are much 
the same as were those of passionate old Peter Went- 
worth, his ancestor ; but it would never for a moment 
occur to him to wish that the most impudent of royal 
begging messages should be incontinently buried in 



46 



EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



hell. Indeed, if in insisting on some explanations 
being given with respect to the monstrous abuses of the 
civil list, and if in affirming his preference for a con- 
stitutional republic based on merit to a monarch}^, 
however limited, founded on birth, he had shown more 
anger and less reason, sneers would have been regarded 
as the only weapon necessary to employ against him. 
It was the very fact that he used arguments which 
every snob in England knew to be unanswerable that 
the royalist tempest — what I ma}^ call the ' ' white 
terror ' ' — was evoked. 

It may here be convenient to consider the repub- 
lican episode in his career. There can be no doubt 
that ro3^alty was alarmed, that its numerous hangers-on 
were alarmed, and that the privileged classes generally, 
whose own existence depends on the maintenance of 
the monarchical superstition as an article of the popular 
faith, were thoroughl}^ alarmed. 

"Kings most commonly," sa^^s Milton, "though 
strong in legions, are but weak at argument, as they who 
have ever been accustomed from their cradle to use 
their will only as their right hand, their reason always 
as their left. Whence, unexpectedly constrained to 
that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny 
adversaries." The Eoj^alists made up for the weakness 
of their arguments by the weight of their brickbats. 
At Bolton, while Sir Charles was addressing a large 
audience admitted by ticket, the place of meeting was 
assailed by a furious mob of Ro3^alists, who succeeded 
in murdering one peaceable Radical, William Scofield, 
a working-man, and wounding several others. The 
magistrates and the police both scandalously failed in 
their duty on the occasion, and to this da}^ their con- 
duct has never been adequately explained. 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 47 

If the blood of an innocent man had been shed by 
republican hands, what a howl for vengeance would 
there not have been heard ! At Reading, the late Mr. 
George Odger, than whom a more able and upright 
politician never lived, was within an ace of meeting the 
fate of Scofield. 

The leading organ of the "party of order," "The 
Standard," threatened the representative of Chelsea 
with physical violence. " The attachment of English- 
men for the royal family," it said, "may take an 
unpleasantly practical form if Sir Charles Dilke should 
ever insult a party of gentlemen by repeating in their 
presence calumnies such as he was permitted to utter 
with impunity before the ' roughs ' of Newcastle." 

It is here worth putting on record the worst that Sir 
Charles did say in the famous address alluded to. The 
meeting was held in November, 1871 ;'Mr. Joseph 
Cowen in the chair. This was the head and front of 
his offending : ' ' There is a widespread belief that a 
republic here is only a matter of education and time. 
It is said that some day a commonwealth will be our 
form of government. Now, history and experience 
show that you cannot have a republic without you 
possess at the same time the republican virtues ; but 
you answer, Have we not public spirit ? have we not the 
practice of self-government? are not we gaining gen- 
eral education? Well, if you can show me a fair 
chance that a republic here will be free from the polit- 
ical corruption that hangs about a monarchy, I say for 
my part, — and I believe that the middle classes in 
general will say, — Let it come." 

The answer should have been. We Englishmen have 
not public spirit ; we have not the practice of self-gov- 



48 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

eminent ; we do not possess the republican vii-tues of 
independence and self-respect, without which there can 
be no genuine republic. We love to deceive both our- 
selves and others. It is the "name" of liberty that 
we affect : the " thing " itself is unknown to us. 

Is it to be wondered at that Sir Charles Dilke, fresh 
from brighter countiies, like the United States, where 
self-government is a reality, should have misconstrued 
the reply of an oracle so ambiguous and untrustworthy ? 
But no harm has been done by his miscalculation, — 
rather much good. The country has been made to 
know that it has at least one public man of first-rate 
ability and dauntless courage, who is not afraid to rec- 
oncile administrative practice with the best political 
theory whenever the people are prepared to abandon 
their unworthy idols, and to look the facts of history, 
experience, and common sense straight in the face. 

And, as for Sir Charles, he is an imperturbable, good- 
natured man, who doubtless considers that he took 
ample revenge on his unscrupulous calumniators when 
he published anonymously his clever brochure^ the 
" Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco." Several lead- 
ing ToTj journals advised him to lay the lessons taught 
by the Radical Prince of Monaco to heart. How he 
must have chuckled ! It is only natures of the largest 
and healthiest mould that are thus capable of looking 
amusedly at the comical aspect of their own doings. 

In the domain of current domestic legislation, Sir 
Charles has played no ununportant part. It is to him 
we owe the popular constitution of our school boards, 
it having been Mr. Forster's original intention to intrust 
the duties .of school management to committees of 
boards of guardians. 



SIR CHARLES W. DILKE. 49 

His also was the clause wMch conferred the munici- 
pal franchise on female ratepayers. He procured for 
the working-men of London a most desirable boon in 
the extension of the hours of polling ; and in ever}?- thing 
appertaining to the better representation of the people 
in Parliament he has taken a leading part. On the all- 
important question of the redistribution of political 
power in particular, he is, it is not too much to say, the 
greatest authority in the House. Like John Bright, he 
loves the big constituencies, and would, as far as possi- 
ble, make them all numerically equal. 

He is not ordinarily an amusing speaker ; but one of 
his speeches on the unreformed corporations will rank 
among the wittiest delivered by smj member since he 
entered the House. His collected speeches on elec- 
toral reform, the civil list, free trade, free land, and 
free schools, are a ready repertory of trustworthy 
facts, which ought to be in the hands of every re- 
former. With respect to the Zulu war, in the session 
of 1879, he was intrusted with the lead in opposition 
to the Government polic}^, — a sufficient indication 
of the respect entertained for his judgment in critical 
issues. 

In every department he is a friend of economy. In 
Parliament he is ever vigilant, and never fussy. When 
he speaks, it is always to contribute some new fact or 
unused argument to the debate ; and he never fails 
to catch the ear of the House, which is never insen- 
sible to straightforwardness, manly bearing, and unre- 
mitting attention to parliamentary duty. He is well 
versed in the forms of the House. Above all, he has 
honesty and excellent common sense to guide his steps 
aright. 



50 



EMINENT LIBEKALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



If, with all these endowments, he should fail in the 
not distant future to achieve great things for his coun- 
try, both I and many other observant sympathizers, 
" whose judgment cries in the top of mine," will feel 
just cause for sore disappointment. 



V. 

JOSEPH COWEN. 

** Like one of the simple great ones, 
Gone for ever and ever by." 

I SHALL never forget one delightful forenoon I 
spent with Mr. Cowen since his entrance into 
Parliament. Previous to his coming to St. Stephen's, 
he had been well known to me by reputation, but by- 
reputation only. 

As the disciple whom Mazzini, the prophet and high 
priest of modern democracy, loved, I was curious to 
know what manner of man the great Northumbrian 
Radical really was. I arrived early, and found him in 
his library in the act of finishing his morning corre- 
spondence. I had just time to glance at his books 
before engaging with him in conversation. A man 
may be known by his books as by the company he 
keeps. They were almost exclusively composed of the 
mo^t recent productions of the democratic press, such 
as one would expect to find on the shelves of an intel- 
ligent artisan politician rather than on those of the 
possessor of a residence in Onslow Square. And the 
appearance of Mr. Cowen himself was exactly in keep- 
ing. His features bore no trace whatever of having 
been imported "at the Conquest." There he sat, a 
genuine workman from Tyneside, the descendant of 

51 



52 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PAKLIAMENT. 

generations of honest toilers, — plain and homely to a 
degree. Nothing but the lofty dome of brow betrayed 
the mental superiority of the man ; and, when subse- 
quently he put on the never-failing slouched hat, even 
that not infallible sign of greatness was remorselessly 
hidden away. 

Presently we began to talk as freely as if we had 
been acquainted for years. The villanous Northum- 
brian intonation was at first somewhat of an impedi- 
ment in my way. I have never learned Northumbrian, 
and, being a fair linguist, did not like to acknowledge 
my ignorance. 

One or two proper names he was good enough to 
spell for me. As, however, he gradually became more 
animated, his English became better and better, until at 
last he was one of the most articulate-speaking of 
Englishmen I had ever met. 

It was a lovely day ; and we decided on a stroll in 
the direction, as it turned out, of the modest house 
where Mazzini conspired against the crowned heads 
of Europe for so many years. On the way he spoke of 
that gifted friend of his youth and manhood, — the 
greatest man, Mr. Cowen thinks, and I am half in- 
clined to accept his estimate, that Europe has produced 
for centuries ; of Garibaldi and Orsini, of Kossuth, of 
Herzen and Bakounin, of Ledru Eollin and Louis 
Blanc, but, above all, of the Polish revolutionary lead- 
ers, Worcell, Darasz, Mieroslawski, Dombrowski, and 
Langiewicz. 

I inquired why, of all the continental exiles, he 
appeared to have been most drawn towards the Poles. 
He replied with profound feeling, "Because they 
seemed the most forlorn." There was no getting over 



JOSEPH CO WEN. 53 

this answer, which throws a flood of light on the de- 
plorable action which Mr. Cowen has seen fit to take 
with regard to the Eastern question. 

For years his house at Blaydon Burn, near New- 
castle, had been an asylum for the victims of Russian 
tyranny. For years he had spent two-thkds of an 
ample income in keeping alive the patriotism of the 
Polish insurgents and other enemies of the White Tsar. 
To him Poland was and is a land of heroes and mar- 
tyrs ; Russia every thing that is the reverse. So thor- 
oughly indentified was Mr. Cowen with the anti-Russian 
sentiments of the Polish and Hungarian exiles, that 
orders were issued by all the despotic powers of Eu- 
rope — by Russia, Prussia, France, Spain, and Italy — 
for his arrest should he venture to set foot on their 
soil. 

Not able to catch the son, the police twice arrested 
his father, the late Sir Joseph Cowen, in his stead. 
His home at Blaydon Burn was incessantly watched by 
the spies of continental governments. 

When Cowen and Mazzini met, it was neither in 
Newcastle nor London, but generally in some quiet mid- 
way town or village, where they could not readily be 
subjected to espionage. The despots of the continent 
had, in point of fact, very good reason to regard Mr. 
Cowen as a dangerous personage. He was not merely 
a wealthy Englishman who gave of his substance freely 
in order that the axe might be laid by others to the 
root of the upas-tree of their authority, but one who 
did not scruple, when occasion offered, to levy war 
against the oppressors, so to speak, on his own ac- 
count. 

During the last rising in Poland he fitted out, at his 



64 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAIVIENT. 

own charges, a vessel, which it was intended should 
hoist the Polish flag, and, like another "Alabama," 
sweep Russian commerce off the seas. She escaped 
from the Tyne without much difflcult}^ and reached 
Barcelona in safety. Her next destination was the 
coast of the little island of Elba, where a Polish commo- 
dore of experience, who had come all the wa}'' from the 
Russian naval station at Kamtchatka, — on French 
leave, of course, — was waiting with a full complement 
of marines to take possession in the name of the Pro- 
visional Government at Warsaw. They waited in vain. 
The drunken ravings and cowardice of the English crew 
brought about the seizure and confiscation of the ves- 
sel by the Spanish authorities almost in spite of them- 
selves. The chief naval authority of the port was at 
that time a brother of General Prim, himself a revo- 
lutionary. He winked hard ; and it so happened, curi- 
ously enough, that the only Spanish man-of-war availa- 
ble for seizing her was under the command of an 
Englishman, formerty a Newcastle engineer, who, on 
being sent to inspect the ship and her papers, winked 
harder still. With reasonable promptitude she might 
have got clear off, but did not, to the great grief of Mr. 
Cowen and the Provisional Government of Poland. 

The above is but one out of scores of daring enter- 
prises with a similar object in which Mr. Cowen has 
been engaged. Once he had a wonderful box con- 
structed, and well lined with notes suitable for issue by 
the Secret Conmaittee of Government over which 
Langiewicz presided. It was given in charge to a 
faithful messenger, with instructions to seek the head- 
quarters of the insurgents by a somewhat devious 
route. No sooner did he set foot on the continent, 



JOSEPH COWEN. 55 

however, than he was seized by the police and put in 
prison. He was never tried, and never told his offence ; 
but the contents of the well-filled purse with which he 
had started from England were weekly disbursed to 
pay his board for the space of a whole year. At the 
end of that time he was put on board a ship bound for 
London, and landed penniless. 

Regarding the adventures, misadventures, and hair- 
breadth escapes of proscribed Poles, Italians, and Hun- 
garians, Mr. Cowen has many a curious and pathetic 
tale to tell. He was the chief banker and general agent 
in this country of the European revolutionaries. Nearly 
all their more important correspondence passed through 
his hands on its way to and from the continent ; and for 
long his commanding position as a British manufac- 
turer and shipowner, doing business in all parts of Eu- 
rope, effectually baffled the most vigilant espionage of 
the despotic powers. 

Having seen the abode of the great Italian, we turned 
into Hyde Park, and under the shadow of Albert the 
Gilt conversed of current politics and Radical living 
politicians. He was very candid, and I remarked with 
interest how similar were his judgments of men and 
things to those which I could readily suppose Mazzini 
would have formed in similar circumstances. One able 
member of Parliament was an atheist to the backbone ; 
and wh}^ such a one should be a Radical rather than a 
Tory, or why, indeed, being a wealthy man, he should 
care to trouble himself about politics at all, was a irjs- 
terytothe member for Newcastle. Another was lack- 
ing in any thing lil^e genuine sympathy for the people, 
and had fallen into the abyss of wire-pulling and politi- 
cal beadledom. All unconsciously he had become as 



56 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

earnestly eloquent as if he were addressing a considera- 
ble audience, his usually homely features admirably 
mirroring the thoughts which rose spontaneously to his 
lips. 

Mr. Cowen's abhorrence of atheistic or unbelieving 
politicians was to me all the more impressive, that his 
own mind was evidently not untinged by sadness, — had 
not altogether escaped the influence of that great de- 
spair with respect to the supernatural which has in our 
day overtaken the bravest and the best. 

On taking leave of Mr. Cowen, I had no hesitation in 
concluding that I had never met a more singular combi- 
nation of simplicity of manner, business-like shrewd- 
ness, intellectual vigor, comprehensive sjrmpathy, and 
powerful imagination. These qualities appear to me to 
mingle in disproportionate measure ; but their co-exist- 
ence in his mind affords a clew to the surprising splen- 
dor of his imagery, which, if the House had had a few 
more samples of it, might almost justify me in ranking 
him next to Bright as a master of senatorial eloquence. 

If great poets are born, not made, so lUiewise are 
great orators ; and sure enough Mr. Cowen is one of the 
few realty great orators in the House. His style is nei- 
ther that of Bright, Gladstone, nor Beaconsfield. His 
best periods have an antique, Roman-lU^e stateliness, 
which is to me peculiar^ attractive. In their majestic 
roll they are more like those of the late Ledru RoUin 
than of any modern speaker. 

Mr. Cowen was born at Blaj^don Burn, near New- 
castle, in the month of July, 1831. His father. Sir 
Joseph Cowen, knight, who preceded him in the repre- 
sentation of Newcastle, was originally a working black- 
smith. He was of an inventive turn of mind ; and, when 



JOSEPH COWEN. 57 

the discovery of gas began to be utilized, lie hit on sev- 
eral ingenious contrivances for facilitating its manufac- 
ture. Before long- he was a wealthy man, and one of 
the most respected and public-spirited citizens of New- 
castle. It is to his untiring exertions and foresight that 
Newcastle in a great measure owes its mercantile pros- 
perity. He found the Tyne a shallow stream, up which 
vessels of the smallest draught could with difficulty sail. 
He left it so deepened that it is now one of the most 
navigable of rivers. The merit of this great achieve- 
ment was publicly recognized by Mr. Gladstone, who, 
in consequence, had him dubbed knight, — a distinction, 
however, to which he was indifferent. From the begin- 
ning to the end of his career he was a Radical reformer. 
The Cowens are a somewhat numerous family, and 
have been settled in and around Blaydon Burn for 
about three centuries. They came originally from Lin- 
disfarne, or Holy Isle, of which the stock had been 
denizens from a remote antiquity. The Cowens were 
among the first genuine English co-operators on record, 
— co-operators in production as well as in distribution. 
They were for generations members of a singular 
society, instituted about the middle of the seventeenth 
century by an enterprising manufacturer, Crowley — the 
" Sir John Anvil " of Addison's " Spectator," — whose 
members worshipped in common, fed in common, and 
shared equally in the common profits of their industry. 
This society was not disrupted till 1814, in the life- 
time of Mr. Cowen's grandfather. Since then, it may 
be worth remarking, co-operation has again, under Mr. 
Cowen's fostering care, taken a firm hold on BlajTlon- 
on-Tyne. Though Blaydon is a mere village, Mr. 
Holyoake, in his " History of Co-operation," declares 



.58 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT, 

that next to Rochdale it has the most remarkable store 
in England. It has grown from a house to a street. 
The library contains upwards of fifteen hundred vol- 
umes of new books. The profits for 1876 amounted 
to eighty-five thousand dollars. The society has an 
education fund of two thousand dollars per annum. 
When the Co-operative Congress met at Newcastle in 
1873, Mr. Cowen, not then M.P., was elected president, 
and delivered an address the remembrance of which 
still lives in co-operative circles. 

Mr. Cowen' s earl}^ education was received at a good 
local school, whence he proceeded to the University of 
Edinburgh, which then, by reason of the renown of its 
professors, enjoyed something lU^e European fame. 
Russell, Palmerston, Lansdowne, had been there before 
him. Christopher North still lectured, and Lord 
Macaulay represented the city in Parliament. With 
no professional object in view, young Cowen sought 
simply culture ; and that he found to more purpose, 
perhaps, than it would have been possible for him to 
do elsewhere. He studied what subjects he pleased, 
preferring the time-honored classics ; became president 
of the University Debating Society ; and entered hearti- 
ly into the political and social life of the citizens. His 
chief extra-mural instructor was the Rev. Dr. John 
Ritchie, — a really great man in a small community. 
Though a preacher, and a Scottish preacher too, he 
was above sophistry, an intrepid Radical, and a first- 
rate platform speaker. 

About this time, also, Mr. Cowen, while yet an Edin- 
burgh student, made the acquaintance of Mazzini, who 
subsequently exercised over him an influence so remark- 
able. 'Young as he was, Mr. Cowen had entered an 



JOSEPH COWEN. 59 

indignant public protest against the infamous and, till 
it was proved, incredible violation of the illustrious 
exile's letters by Sir James Graham and the post-office 
officials. Mazzini was interested in his youthful de- 
fender, thanked him by letter, and to Mr. Cowen were 
addressed the dying patriot's last written words. 

On returning to Blaydon, Mr. Cowen engaged actively 
in his father's business of fire-proof brick and retort 
manufacture, the firm normally employing as many as 
a thousand hands. At the Bla^^don works there have 
been no strikes, for the very good reason that Mr. 
Cowen, though an employer of labor, has always been 
regarded as an intelligent exponent of trades-union 
views, — in short, as a trusted trades-union leader. 
His support of the nine-hours movement was from first 
to last of a most decided character, and such as every- 
where to evoke the warmest feelings of gratitude among 
workmen. His persistent efforts, too, to found, im- 
prove, and federate mechanics' institutes all over the 
populous Tyneside district ought not to be forgotten. 
For many years he personally discharged the duties of 
a teacher in one of these institutions, which owe so 
much of ^their success to his enthusiasm and talent as 
organizing secretary. 

Nor has Mr. Cowen been less active in the domain 
of pure politics, whether local or imperial. He is 
now president of the Northern Reform League, — an 
organization which has been in existence in one form 
or another for more than twenty j^ears. He was pres- 
ent at its inception, and acted as its first treasurer. In 
the Reform demonstrations of 1867 the league played 
an important part, calling out an array of supporters 
which the metropolis itself could hardly match. 



60 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

To add to all these manifold activities, Mr. Cowen 
has for twenty years been the proprietor and polit- 
ical director of " The Newcastle Chronicle," one of the 
most influential journals in provincial England. It has 
writers, who, for range of political knowledge and 
absolute fidelity to principle, have no superiors in or 
out of London. The result was seen at the general 
election of 1874. When the Conservative re-action ran 
high everywhere else, the Northumbrian Liberals smote 
their Tory opponents hip and thigh all along the line. 
Twelve Liberals to one Tory were the Durham district 
returns. 

In 1852 appeared "The English Republic" and 
"The Northern Tribune," republican prints, pitched 
in a very lofty key ; and to these Mr. Cowen con- 
tributed largely in prose, verse, and, what was even 
more essential, money. In those days Mr. Cowen was 
in fact, I presume, what he now is only in theory^ a 
stanch republican. 

With regard to Mr. Cowen' s parliamentary career, it 
is hard to speak with impartiality. His fervid Jingoism 
has affected with profound regret his warmest admirers, 
myself among the rest. There have not even been 
wanting some base enough to attribute his support 
of the wicked and disastrous foreign policy of the 
Beaconsfield government to motives other than disinter- 
ested. The true explanation of his aberration is quite 
otherwise. He is still a Hungarian, a Polish insur- 
gent. Nothing is changed. Russia is his mortal foe. 
Like a true Bourbon, he has neither learned nor for- 
gotten. Any stick is good enough to beat the Musco- 
vite dog with. He advocated the Crimean war in the 
hope that something might ' ' turn up ' ' for his exiled 



JOSEPH COWEN. 61 

clients. Nothing came of it ; but a fig for experience ! 
Mr. Cowen is, like the great author and finisher of 
his faith, Mazzini, essentially an idealist, a poet with 
intense s^^npathy and vivid imagination. His sj^mpa- 
thy and imagination have temporarily overwhelmed his 
reason : . that is all, — nothing better, nothing worse. 
If I were to have the making of two perfect Eadical 
politicians, I should mix Dilke and Cowen together. 
The one is two-thirds reason and one-third imagination ; 
the other, two-thirds imagination and one-third reason. 
Give C. one-third of D.'s reason, and D. one-third of 
C.'s sympathetic fancy, and then you would have a 
correct balance of powers. 

Bright' s is the only powerful intellect in the House 
in which reason and imagination are blended in just 
and equal proportions, the imagination acting as a 
stimulus to the reason, but never as a controlling 
power. I will illustrate what I mean by a passage 
from Mr. Cowen' s magnificently unwise Jingo speech in 
the House on the occasion of the supposed Russian ad- 
vance on Constantinople : "I ask English Liberals if 
they have ever seriously considered the political conse- 
quences of an imperial despotism bestriding Europe, — 
reaching, indeed, from the waters of the Neva to those 
of the Amoor, — of the head of the Greek Church, the 
Eastern Pope, the master of many legions, having one 
foot on the Baltic, planting another on the Bosphorus. 
When icebergs float into southern latitudes, they freeze 
the air for miles around. Will not this political ice- 
berg, when it descends upon the genial shores of the 
Mediterranean, wither the young shoots of libert}?^ that 
are springing up between the crevices of the worn-out 
fabrics of despotism ? " Now, all this is very striking, 



62 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

— nay, appalling; but John Briglit, I am sure, know- 
ing that icebergs have a habit of melting long before 
they reach the shores of the Mediterranean, would 
never have been guilty of bringing any berg of his so 
far south. As it is, the political iceberg from the 
north has liberated Bulgaria, while that from the 
south, pushed on by English Jingoes, has ineffectually 
striven to roll its icy mass over the young shoots of 
Roumelian liberty. 

Apart, however, from this deplorable Jingo infatua- 
tion, Mr. Cowen's parliamentary achievements have in 
no way belied the high hopes that his friends reposed 
in his great abilities and immense experience. His 
speeches on the Friendly Societies Bill, on the County 
Suffrage Bill, on Mr. PlimsoU's bill, on the County 
Courts Bill, the Licensing Boards BUI, and, above all, 
on the Royal Titles BUI, have given evidence of a 
varied capacity for legislative work which has not been 
equalled by any member of his own? standing in the 
House. 

During the parliamentary contest in Newcastle, oc- 
casioned by the death of his father, Mr. Cowen de- 
livered a series of speeches on political questions and 
public policy which justly arrested national attention. 
They have been collected, and will abundantly repay 
perusal. They are, without exception, as fine elec- 
tioneering speeches as I ever read, and, if he had never 
opened his lips again, would have entitled him to no 
mean place among English orators and statesmen. 

On one point only did he show a disposition to lower 
the Radical flag, — to be unfaithful to himself and his 
glorious antecedents. He was repeatedly taxed with 
being a republican ; and his explanation was, that he 



JOSEPH CO WEN. 63 

held the republican form of government to be in theory 
the highest known to man, but that in practice he was 
devoted to the British monarchy. Now, to my mind, 
this is wholly illogical, and not altogether honest. 
Having discovered a true or best theory, it is the duty 
of every honest man to act on it, whether it be in the 
domain of politics or mathematics. If there is a better 
way, we have no right to fold our hands and content 
ourselves with the worse. " Ye cannot serve God and 
Manunon." To the sincere mind all compromise in 
such circumstances is impossible. It will not do to 
say, " Well, no doubt in theory the worship of God is 
the correct thing ; but for all practical purposes the ser- 
vice of Mammon is preferable." Least of all living 
English politicians could I have conceived of Mr. Jo- 
seph Cowen appearing on a public platform with such 
an impotent formula in his mouth. In the case of 
others ' ' thrift might follow fawning ; ' ' but with Mr. 
Cowen it was not, and is not so. That he should not 
have been able to say to this contemptible spirit of 
subterfuge, " Get thee behind me, Satan," is to me a 
mystery even unto this day. 



VI. 

SIR WILFRID LAWSOK 

** And though that he was witty he was wise, 
And of his port as meke as is a mayde: 
He never yet no vilanie ne sayde 
In alle his lif , unto no manere wight — 
He was a veray parflt gentil knight." 

I BELIEVE with all sound Christian people, our 
mendicant archbishops and bishops included, that 
it is as impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom 
of heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle. My experience has likewise agreed with that 
of the pagan Fronto, who, Marcus Antoninus says, told 
him ' ' that the so-called high-born are for the most part 
heartless." But, as is generally admitted, there are 
exceptions to all rules, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson is an 
exceptional man. He is a baronet, and so wealthy that 
I am almost afraid to particularize with regard to his 
income. Having never suffered the least inconvenience 
from the deceitfulness of riches myself, I prefer to speak 
of matter more within the scope of my knowledge. 
With respect to Sir Wilfrid Lawson, however, I am 
sure of two things. In spite of his baronetcy he is a 
' ' joll}^ good fellow ; ' ' and in spite of his riches he may 
reasonabl}^ hope to enter in at the celestial gates, unless 
they are barred by John Calvin himself, — a contingenc}^ 
which there is less and less reason to apprehend. 

64 



SIR WILFRID LAWSON. 65 

In any case there would be very little good of send- 
ing him to "the other place." Like the jovial monk 
of the old church legend, he would almost certainly, if 
ordered downstairs, make a little heaven of mirth in 
his own more immediate neighborhood, and so disturb 
general arrangements that it would speedily be found 
necessary to have him removed to more comfortable 
quarters. For not only is he witty in himself, but the 
cause that wit is in other men. It is impossible to con- 
verse with him for five minutes running without becom- 
ing in some measure infected by his irresistible spirit of 
"gay wisdom," as Earl Beaconsfield has felicitously 
^ designated his peculiar humor. 

It is a total mistake to suppose that Sir yVilfrid's 
jokes are mere closet reproductions. He is even more 
witt}'^ in private than in public ; and you never meet him 
that he has not the air of a man who has just experi- 
enced 'some extraordinary piece of good luck, in which 
you are called upon, if you are not an absolute churl, 
to participate. He is brimful and running over with 
sprightly sallies and clever epigTams. Indeed, they 
seem to come as nataralty to him as dulness to most of 
us. And his wit is of the best kind. It is never used 
to wound the feelings of any, but to laugh men out of 
their follies, pretences, and insincerities. His keenest 
shafts are never envenomed, and are never sped except 
with a moral purpose. Were it otherwise, he might be 
classed with the humorous light horsemen of debate, — 
of whom Mr. Bernal Osborne was a favorite specimen, 
— in which case he would, of course, be entitled to no 
place in this series. 

As it is, I believe Sir Wilfrid Lawson to be one of 
the most earnest and trustworthy Radicals in the House 



66 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

of Connnons. Some there are, doubtless, who hold 
that true moral earnestness is never to be found clothed 
in quasi-comical attire, — that facetiousness and Eadi- 
cahsm are incompatible. My reply is, that the honorable 
member for Carlisle finds genial satire to be by far the 
most effective weapon in his intellectual armorj", and 
that, like a wise man, he puts his special talent to the 
best use he can. In skilful hands the scimitar of Sal- 
adin will strike home as surely as the battle-axe of 
King Richard. 

After some consideration of the matter, I have ar- 
rived at the conclusion that great Radicals, like great 
poets, are born, not made. They inherit, rather than 
acquire, the qualities of intellect and heart which enable 
them to point the path of human progress. Radicalism 
is a rare and generous fruit, which it takes generations 
to grow in any thing like perfection. 
. Sir Wilfrid's grandfather — jovial old Mr. Wybergh 
— was the counterpart of his grandson in wit and in 
politics, except that he required the aid of something 
stronger than either tea or cold water in order to keep 
in good form. An obituary notice of him, not long 
since unearthed by Mr. George Augustus Sala, credits 
him with an ' ' uninterrupted gaiete de coeur, which not 
even pain or sickness had power to subdue." When 
Lord Brougham made his historic descent on Cumber- 
land in the Liberal interest, the old gentleman was one 
of his most active supporters, and much harm did he 
do to the Tories by the inimitable raillery with which 
he assailed them. On one occasion, observing that the 
Conservative side of the hustings was crowded with 
clerg^nnen, he stretched out his hand towards them, and 
prefaced a spirited onslaught with the text, " The Lord 



SIR WILFEID LAWSON. 67 

gave the word, and great was the company of the 
preachers." 

He was not a Lawson at all, but the representa- 
tive of an old Yorkshire family who had become 
connected with the county of Cumberland through 
marriage with Miss Hartley, whose sister was the 
wife of the then owner of Br ay ton. Old Wilfrid 
Lawson, having no descendants, left his estates and 
name to his godson and nephew by affinity, — the father 
of the present baronet. He — the late Sir Wilfrid — 
married a Miss Graham of Netherby, the sister of Sir 
James Graham, the well-known Minister of state, who 
was consequently the member for Carlisle's uncle. Sir 
Wilfrid, senior, was a stanch Liberal, who did not 
permit family connections to hamper him in the dis- 
charge of his public duties. When Sir James Graham 
vacillated in his allegiance to Liberalism, his brother-in- 
law, who was universally esteemed for his many virtues, 
set an example to the constituency of fidelity to princi- 
ple by being among the first to record his vote against 
him. The poll was then open and of two days' dura- 
tion, and the consequence was that the Minister lost 
his seat. On repentance only was he permitted to re- 
sume it. 

The witty champion of the Permissive Bill was born 
in the year 1829 at Brayton Hall, Aspatria, Cumber- 
land. He succeeded to the family estates and the 
baronetcy — which has existed, with a break, for about 
two centuries — on the death of his father in 1867. 
His education was, for a youth of his social status, of 
a very limited kind. He was never either at a public 
school or at college ; and, if you ask him what instruc- 
tion he received, he replies, with evident satisfaction. 



68 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

that he never had any. His father was a very " Low " 
or Evangelical Churchman, — a teetotaler, too, for many 
years, — who dreaded the contaminating influences of 
university life on his boys more than he coveted for 
them academic distinctions. What happened, accord- 
ingly, I cannot better describe than in the words of Sir 
Wilfrid' s brother William, the author of ' ' Ten Years 
of Gentleman Farming," a singularly candid and inter- 
esting book. "I had the advantage," he saj^s, "of 
being the son of parents who were more anxious that 
their children should be happy and good than that they 
should be learned or great. My father had my educa- 
tion conducted — in a religious manner — at home, 
where I acquired a little Latin and Greek, and a few 
other things ; and where, as is the case with many 
other youths, any thing in the shape of lessons was not 
attractive to me, and I learned as little as possible. I 
had, before I was eighteen, travelled several times on 
the continent of Europe, and had visited Egypt and 
Palestine ; but circumstances never brought me in con- 
tact with rich or great people, and I had not much of 
wliat is called ' knowledge of the world ; ' nor, as I 
alwa3^s had the prospect of enough wealth to enable me 
to live without working, did I form what are called 
' business habits.' Trained as a shooter of animals, a 
hunter of Cumberland beasts with hounds, and a trapper 
of vermin, I found myself in the spring of 1861, in my 
twentj^-fifth year, without an occupation, without many 
acquaintances, — except among the poor, whom I had 
not learned to despise because they spoke bad grammar, 
and took their coats off to work, — and without the 
reputation of having been successful in any undertaking 
except that of the mastership and huntsmanship of my 
brother' s foxhounds . ' ' 



SIE WILFEID LAWSON. 69 

As a consequence of this sort of training, Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson is almost entirely devoid of personal ambition. 
Goodness, not greatness, is the object at which he aims. 
He is rich ; but his sympathies with the poor are as 
fresh and keen as if he were one of them. He has 
not been deluded b}^ the deceitfulness of riches, nor is 
•■ ' rank ' ' to him other than the poor ' ' guinea stamp ' ' 
in comparison with the pure gold of genuine manhood. 
I know no one in any station of life who seems to me 
to realize more fully that 

" Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
And simple faith than Norman blood." 

For fifteen or sixteen years he hdlfe been a total abstainer, 
simply from a sense of duty towards his fellows, and 
not from any personal or physical antipathy to stimu- 
lants. While the world standeth, he will do nothing to 
cause his brother to offend ; nay, more, he will do his 
utmost to remove stumbling-blocks from his brother's 
path. In so acting, he may be right or he may be 
wrong ; but at all events the motive is eminently 
respectable. 

In 1859, in his father's lifetime, he entered Parlia- 
ment as member for Carlisle, and found a more useful 
and honorable occupation than that of " a hunter of 
Cumberland beasts with hounds." In March, 1864, 
he first brought in a bill, since known as the Permissive 
Bill, " to enable owners, and occupiers of property in 
certain districts to prevent the sale of intoxicating 
liquors within such districts." He lost his seat in con- 
sequence, and from 1865 to 1868 he was out of Parlia- 
ment. Then the tide turned ; and the cathedral city 
reversed its verdict, many publicans and sinners doubt- 
less repenting them of the evil they had done. 



70 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Like most places blessed with a dean and chapter, 
the Carlisle electors are in truth an^^ thing but a model 
constituency. It is but likely that an obnoxious ex- 
mayor of the cit}' petitioned against the return of two 
municipal councillors on the ground of briber}^ and 
treating, and had them duly unseated, the joke of the 
affau' being that among the more systematic treaters 
figured some of the most active members of Su' Wil- 
frid' s committee. Altogether the trial revealed a state 
of social habits and political practices so reprehensible, 
that one can onl}^ be thankful that so questionable a 
constituenc}^ should elect to be represented in Parlia- 
ment b}^ so unquestionable a member as Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson. It is one of the advantages of virtue that 
vice is alwaj^s compelled to paj^ it a certain unwilling 
homage. 

It remains to speak of Sir Wilfrid' s legislative career, 
and of certain conceptions of the common weal with 
which his name has become indissolubl}^ associated in 
the public mind. Two interests of transcendent impor- 
tance — one social, the other political — he has made 
peculiarh'^ his own; viz., those of temperance and 
peace. He is the sworn foe of publicans and soldiers. 
He regards both as Jiostes humani generis^ whom it is 
the dut}^ of all good citizens to unite to extupate. In 
place of strong di'ink he offers us cold water, and in 
place of war a court of arbitration. Was there ever 
such a visionary? Whj^, since the dawn of human his- 
toij till now, these are the twin Molochs to which count- 
less generations have sacrificed their first-born. Who 
are we that we should depart from the wisdom of our 
ancestors ? Did not the Son of man himself come eat- 
ing and drinking? Are not the princes and poten- 



SIR WILFEID LAWSON. 71 

tates of the earth — our "sovereigns and statesmen" 
— they who set armies in motion? And do not all 
manner of priests, whether Protestant or Romanist, fer- 
vently thanli God when the bloody work has been 
effectual^ accomplished ? David going out with sling 
and stone against Goliath of Gath did not require to 
possess one-twentieth part of the sublime faith of him 
who undertakes to rout a combined array of publicans 
and Jingoes. 

A wide survey of history seems to show that the 
essential habits of individuals and of nations are inerad- 
icable. The asceticism of the Commonwealth was 
followed by the unbridled license of the Restoration ; 
the austere vu'tues of the Roman Republic by the un- 
limited vices of the Empire. Human nature is so im- 
perfect that there is an undoubted danger in being 
" righteous overmuch." What, then, is the true motto 
of the temperance reformer ? It is to be found in the 
words of Goethe, " Without haste and without rest.'' 
The drinking habits of the people must be eradicated 
gradually, one branch of the upas tree being lopped off 
here, and another there, till at last the time may come 
when it will be safe to strike at the trunk itself. 

I do not for a moment mean to affirm that Sii' Wilfrid 
Lawson is so ignorant of human nature as to be likely 
to dash his head incontinently against it ; but he has 
many intemperate^ temperate followers who habitually 
do so, to the great detriment of the cause which they 
and all well-intentioned citizens have at heart. Enthu- 
siastic temperance reformers are so apt to underestimate 
the warping influence of social customs and of early 
acquired habits, even on the healthiest consciences. I, 
for example, through force of association, am not an 



72 



EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



abstainer, though I often feel that it would be right I 
should be so ; yet I am Pharisee enough to thank 
Heaven as often as opportunity offers, that I am not 
like that inhuman ' ' hunter of Cumberland beasts with 
hounds," Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., the apostle of 
temperance, whose devotion to the public weal and 
domestic purity of life I so greatl37" admire. I would 
rather get hopelessly di^unk every day in the week than 
even for once 

" Blend my pleasure or my pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that lives." 

Howbeit, had I been born a fox-hunting squire like the 
baronet of Brayton, there are ten chances to one that I 
should have been as arrant a Nimrod as he. "That 
monster custom, which all sense doth eat of habit's 
devil," is too much for us all, if not in one particular, 
then in another. 

Lilve all friends of temperance who aim at possible 
reforms, I rejoice that Su' Wilfrid, during the session 
of 1879, saw fit to substitute "Local Option" for the 
Permissive Bill. The latter had a detestable plebisci- 
tary flavor about it which made it stink in the nostrils 
of every man who believes that representative institu- 
tions afford the safest guaranties at once for liberty- of 
the citizen and efficiency of administration. From this 
objection Local Option is free, and a flag is now un- 
furled around which may rally every one who is not the 
blind partisan of a " trade ' ' whifch openty boasts of 
prefeiTing its own small and not over-creditable "in,- 
terest" to ever^^ consideration of national welfare. 
For years the publicans have openly identified them- 
selves with every re-actionary " cry," and they will 



SIR WILFRID LAWSON. 73 

have themselves to blame if at last they find themselves 
at deadly feud with the whole Liberal party. It is per- 
fectly^ intolerable that such a body of licensed monopo- 
lists should be permitted longer to make and unmake 
governments. To this conclusion has Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson' s persistent efforts brought us ; and who shall 
say it is not a long way ? 

With regard to Sir Wilfrid's enlightened advocacy 
of peace principles, no exception whatever need be 
taken. He is not, so far as I know, a " peace-at-any- 
price man ; ' ' but he is the very incarnation of the 
righteous spirit of anti-Jingoism. Historically Jingo- 
ism is a ghastly recrudescence of all the brutal, blood- 
thirsty passions of bygone generations. Sir Wilfrid 
was one of the few members of the House, who, at the 
moment that we seemed on the very brink of commit- 
ting the incalculable folly and unforgivable crime of 
rushing into a second Crimean war, most clearly appre- 
hended the true character of the impending calamity, 
and courageousl}^ pointed it out to Parliament and the 
country. It is in such crises that true Radicals, genu- 
ine patriots, come to the surface. It is not every man 
who, when such tried friends of freedom and national 
rectitude as Mr. Joseph Cowen are found fervently 
preaching the immoral and parochial doctrine of ' ' my 
countr}^ right, or my countr}^ wrong," has the fidelit}^ 
to affirm, " I have a mightier countrj^ than you, and a 
larger interest to protect. The globe is my country, 
and its entire inhabitants are my countrymen. Eternal 
justice is the interest which I desire to see conserved." 
This was the spirit in which Sir Wilfrid spoke when 
nearly every one else feared to utter words of truth and 
soberness ; and his constancy ought not to be forgotten. 



74 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

His cause, the cause of international arbitration, is a 
growing one. In spite of appearances, the day-dream 
of Mazzini will yet be realized. There will be a United 
States of Europe, as of America, and the sad Italian — 

"Who, rowing hard against the stream, 
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, 
And did not dream it was a dream " — 

will be numbered among the world's greatest seers. 

Sir Wilfrid has likewise, in the matter of the royal 
grants, along with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. P. A. 
Taylor, done all that one faithful representative could 
to rescue the people's hardly earned money from the 
devouring maw of useless princes and princesses. 

For the rest, the member from Carlisle, on subjects 
with which he is less familiar, alwaj'^s follows the best 
lead ; and his vote will never be found recorded among 
the ayes when it should be among the noes. 

He is not what can be called an orator ; but his stjde 
of speaking is admirably adapted to the matter, which 
is no less closely reasoned than wittily conceived. He 
is the readiest and perhaps the most pungent wiiter 
of satirical verses I ever met. If he were setting him- 
self to it, he could fill columns of "Punch" every 
week, to the great advantage of the proprietors. I 
subjoin a very recent specimen, consisting of a para- 
phrase of the ministerial reply to Mr. Samuelson's 
question regarding the language officially used in 
Cyprus : — 

"About Cyprus we scarce know what language to speak, 
Whether English, or Turkish, or Russian, or Greek ; 
There's only one language we can't speak, forsooth, — 
T\Tien Cyprus is mentioned we never speak truth." 



VII. 

HENRY FAWCETT. 

** This is he who, felled by foes, 
Sprang harmless up, refreshed by blows." 

FOR twenty-one years the brightness of noonday 
has been to Henry Fawcett, " member for Hack- 
ney and Hindostan," as the blackness of midnight. 
As is well known, he has been stone blind during the 
whole period of his public life. The fact is a most 
painful one, which I allude to thus early, not for the 
purpose of exciting sympathy, but because it is impos- 
sible to estimate aright the magnitude of Mr. Fawcett' s 
achievements if the heaviness of the odds against 
which he has had to contend is not duly taken into 
account. There are always clever people read}^ to 
demonstrate that untoward calamities, which do not 
happen to themselves, are somehow blessings in dis- 
guise; Are 3^ou lamed for life? So much the better 
for you. Is there not thus effected an immense saving 
of shoe-leather? For the future you are independent 
of shoemakers. Are you deprived of sight? Good for 
you again ; for is it not a fact that the blind have a 
marvellous gift of groping their way in the dark ? Do 
not, for example, the excavations of Herculaneum and 
Pompeii testify that in their last agony the doomed 
inhabitants sought the aid of sightless guides to direct 

75 



76 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

their flight? Most true, there is generally some com- 
pensation for the heaviest misfortune ; but, it is, alas ! 
as a rule, far too small for the loss sustained. And 
such, no doubt, has been the experience of the eminent 
politician and economist, Hemy Fawcett. 

Bereft of sight, he has achieved much ; with sight, 
he would beyond question have achieved still more. 
For his is an exceedingly strong and healthy nature, as 
little prone to succumb to the enervating influences of 
prosperity as to the prostrating blows of adversity, — a 
true Samson Agonistes, whose locks, however closely 
shorn by unlucky chance, were bound to grow some 
day and somehow. His intellect is characterized by a 
vigor that is almost redundant, a tenacity of purpose 
that turns not back, and a personal courage curiously 
combined with caution, which it would be exceedingly 
difficult to match inside or outside of Parliament. 
Physically he is a picture of health and streng-th, one 
of the tallest men in the House, with long sinewy limbs 
and that peculiar poise about the shoulders suggestive 
of a leonine bound, which is generall}^ observable in 
persons of extraordinary intrepidity of character. As 
might be expected of one in such fine animal condition, 
Mr. Fawcett' s habitual mood is cheerful, even to mirth- 
fulness. He has escaped being a mere athlete by 
becoming a scholar ; and it is pretty certain, that, if he 
had not been a philosopher, he would have been a dem- 
agogue. He has strong natural affinities for the "un- 
washed" multitude. "March without the people," 
he would say with Ledru Rollin, "and 3^ou march into 
night : their instincts are a finger-pointing of Pi'ovi- 
dence, always turned towards real benefit." 

Men cast in such a big mould as Mr. Fawcett are 



HENRY FAWCETT. 77 

almost inevitably democrats. The mere gaudium cer- 
taminis of politics is life for them. With culture and 
honesty of purpose such as the Cambridge professor 
possesses, robust, hearty natures of this stamp make 
the most trustworthy Radical politicians. They have 
what is so necessary for political life, "staying power." 
They do not despair of progress because for a time 
there is an ebb in the popular tide. They know that 
high-water mark will again be reached before long ; 
and, if they cannot do better, they are content to wait 
the event. 

Henry Fawcett, M.P., was born in the neighborhood 
of Salisbury in the year 1833. His father. Alderman 
Fawcett of Salisbur}^, was born at Kirby Lonsdale in 
1793, and is now consequently in his eighty-sixth 
year ; and a haler old gentleman or more resolute Radi- 
cal it would be difficult to find in all England. He 
came to Wiltshire from Westmoreland in his j^outh, 
and, after engaging for some time in trade, betook him- 
self to the more congenial occupation of a gentleman 
farmer. His energy and intelligence as an agriculturist 
were conspicuous ; and, when the anti-corn law agita- 
tation was initiated, both were heartily enlisted on 
behalf of the league. Even yet he is an effective 
public speaker, and is a personal friend and warm 
admirer of Mr. Bright. Mr. Fawcett' s mother is no 
less remarkable. Like her husband, the alderman, she 
is a sort of semper eadem no less in mind than in body. 
She is a keen politician, — on the right side, of course ; 
and to her does Mr. Fawcett attribute, in no small 
measure, the strength of his own Radical convictions. 

Thus happy in his parentage, the member for Hack- 
ney was no less so in other essential particulars affect- 



78 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

ing his childhood and youth. He was country bred, — 
and such a country, too, — imbibing no taste that was 
not equally good for head, heart, and body. Health, 
the essential condition of all great achievements, he 
stored up abundantly, while at the same time the dis- 
cipline of his mind was by no means neglected. His 
family were neither rich nor poor, but in that "just 
middle ' ' state which neither suggests to the youth that 
exertion is superfluous, nor inflicts on him the labor of 
acquirement as an unavoidable drudgery. Till his 
fourteenth year he attended a local school in the vicin- 
ity of Salisbury, whence he was removed to Queenwood 
College , Hants , where he remained for two years . There 
he had the good luck to benefit by the teaching of Pro- 
fessors Tyndall and Frankland. He next attended 
King's College, London; and in 1852 he was duly 
entered as a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. To 
Cambridge young Fawcett brought with him an un- 
quenchable love of all manner of rural pursuits, the 
frame of an athlete, the ringing voice of a hunts- 
man, and a tolerable store of learning. He did not 
neglect his opportunities at the university. He was 
an adept at boating, skating, riding, angling, walking, 
rackets, cricketing, and prize-taking. In 1856 he 
graduated seventh wrangler, and was subsequently 
elected a fellow of his college. 

From a very early age he had displayed premonitory 
symptoms of a more than ordinary devotion to politics. 
"While still an undergraduate, the writings of the late 
John Stuart Mill made a deep impression on his mind, 
and partl}^ determined him to seek an entrance into 
Parliament by the time-honored avenue of the bar. 
He according!}" commenced to ' ' keep terms ' ' at Lin- 



HENRY FAWCETT. 79 

coin's Inn, where he would have been duly " called" 
had not the terrible calamity to which I have already 
alluded intervened. 

In the autumn .of 1858 he was one day out with a 
small part}^ engaged in partridge-shooting. A covey 
rose, and flew over a slight elevation, on the remote 
side of which Mr. Fawcett had momentaril}^ disap- 
peared. A companion unfortunately fired at the 
instant his head topped the rising ground ; and two 
pellets, with something like diabolic precision, neatly 
perforating the spectacles he was wearing, lodged them- 
selves in the retinae of the eyes, and " at one stride 
came the dark." From that da}' to this, 

" Those eyes, though clear, 
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; 
» Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year. 
Or man or woman." 

The pain of the accident was soon over, and it remained 
for Mr. Fawcett to consider how far so irreparable a 
mischance had necessarily affected his habits of life 
and future prospects. His invincible pluck did not 
desert him for a moment. Luckily his academic train- 
ing was completed ; and the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, 
on hearing the sad facts of the case, considerately 
offered to ' ' call ' ' him to the bar without further to- 
do. He might succeed as a counsel in spite of his 
blindness. Armed with logic, imperturbabilit}', and 
physical endurance such as his, one might undoubtedly 
accomplish much. Still, the drawbacks to a successful 
professional career were undeniable ; and Mr. Fawcett, 
wisety it seems to me, resolved not to encounter them, 
but to take a straighter cut to Parliament. 



80 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Except in this particular, however, he determined 
that his blindness should make ' ' no difference ; ' ' and 
it is wonderful how little it has actually affected his 
habits and intentions. In the very heart of London he 
has contrived to secure a modest house with a garden 
one-tenth of a mile long, where he can promenade all 
alone to his heaii;' s content. He is never so happy as 
in the open air, and in his native Wiltshire his pedes- 
trian feats have become almost proverbial. His topo- 
graphical knowledge is so minute, that when his guides 
are at fault he not unfrequently directs them, — from 
earl}^ recollections of natural objects of course. He 
religiously frequents the university boat-race on the 
Thames, and is as heartH}^ interested in the proceed- 
ings of the day as the keenest-eyed observer. At 
Cambridge he is stroke-oar of the ' ' Ancient Mariners' ' ' 
boat; and a better stroke no crew of "mariners," 
ancient or modern, need desire. He is a good swim- 
mer. Yv^hen the fens are frozen, he takes to his skates 
as natiu"ally as a duck in the water takes to her webs. 
On such occasions his daughter, a graceful maiden of 
eleven winters, precedes her father, whistling pla^^full}^ 
He is likewise an ardent equestrian ; and, when in resi- 
dence at the university, seldom a da}^ elapses that the 
professor of political economy mnj not be seen, 
accompanied by some one of his numerous friends, 
cantering fearlessl}^ on Newmarket Heath or Across 
Flat. He occasionally even follows the hounds on a 
well-trained steed ; and so hard a rider is he said to be, 
that the livery-stable keepers have two tariffs, — one 
ordinary for those who have not been seen in the society 
of Professor Fawcett, and one extraordinary for those 
who have. Add to this that Mr. Fawcett is one of the 



HENEY FAWCETT. 81 

best and most indefatigable amateur sabnon and trout 
fishers that can well be imagined, and it will readily be 
admitted that no gTeat ' ' difference ' ' has overtaken 
him with regard to outdoor recreations. 

But, if this is the case with respect to his personal 
habits, it is none the less true of his political inten- 
tions. He had hoped to enter the House as a success- 
ful counsel. As it was, he had to seek admission with- 
out the aid of that quasi-passport, without fame, and 
without what is even still more indispensable to a par- 
liamentary candidate, money, — not that he was bj?^ any 
means a poor man in the strict sense of the word. He 
has always been in comfortable circumstances, thanks 
to a provident father and his own exertions ; but rather 
in the sense that his wants have been few and legiti- 
mate, rather than that his income has been large. But 
he has had no superfluous thousands with which to oil 
the electoral wheels of any constituency. He has, 
however, invariably got over this difficulty with charac- 
teristic boldness and commendable candor. 

His first venture was with the electors of Southwark, 
in 1861, on the death of Sir Charles Napier, "Black 
Charlie." He did not know a soul in the borough, 
which he invaded with his secretary in a cab. They 
went straight to a printer's, and ordered a number of 
bills to be issued announcing the candidature of Henry 
Fawcett in the Eadical interest. He had previously 
spoken in public, — once in Exeter Hall on trades-union- 
ism, and once at Glasgow, at the Social Science Con- 
gress, with considerable acceptance ; but to all, except 
the merest fraction of the electors, his very name was 
unknown. And, worse and worse, when they came to 
meet him, he was blind ; and they soon had it from his 



82 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

own lips that he was not rich, and would employ neither 
paid agent nor canvasser. Was there ever such a mad- 
man? Howbeit, the great ability and striking gallantry 
of the blind candidate soon began to tell with the con- 
stituency ; and there is no saying what might have hap- 
pened if Mr. Fawcett had not been over-persuaded to 
retire before the poll to avoid the charge of creating a 
division in the Liberal ranks. The experience he had 
gained, however, was of the most valuable kind. It 
went to prove, incredible as it may appear, that the 
portals of the ' ' rich man' s club ' ' at Westminster ma}^ 
be successfully forced at the cost of a few hundreds bj^ 
candidates at once poor and honest, if only they have 
the requisite faith and ability to make the venture. In 
1863 Mr. Fawcett contested the borough of Cambridge 
on the same principles that he had found to answer so 
unexpectedly well in Southwark. He was defeated, 
but by an insignificant majority. He next contested 
Brighton in 1864, warmly espousing the cause of the 
North in its struggle with the slaveholding States of 
the American Union. Again he was unsuccessful ; but 
the following year, nothing daunted, he returned to the 
charge, and was elected by a large majority. In 1868 
he was once more victorious ; but at the general election 
of 1874 — the annus mirabilis of Tor}^ re-action — both 
he and his Liberal colleagues in the representation were 
thi-own out, and replaced by Conservative nobodies. 

It was impossible, however, that such a man should 
long be excluded from the legislature. In two months' 
time a vacancy occurred in the representation of the 
vast metropolitan constituency of Hackney, and the 
eyes of the Liberal electors were at once turned with 
one accord towards Mr. Fawcett. He was elected 



HENRY FAWCETT. 83 

without difficulty ; his great services to India, and his 
persistent opposition to all encroachments on Epping 
Forest and the New Forest, weighing heavily in his 
favor in the electoral balance. 

In Parliament Mr. Fawcett' s career has been one of 
no ordinary success. The blind Postmaster-General is 
recognized by all parties in the House as a speaker of 
decided mark, and his vote is always to be weighed as 
well as counted. He entered the legislature with a 
bod}^ of well-defined principles, and he has stuck to 
ther^i manfully through evil and through good report. 
His political conceptions are, in a great measure, those 
of his friend, the late Mr. John Stuart Mill. Unlilve 
Goethe, for example, it was the special function of that 
great and generous thinker to fertilize, not sterihze, the 
minds of other men. 

" And methinks the work is nobler, 
And a mark of greater might ; 
Better far to make a thinker 
Than to make a proselyte, — 
Nobler, for the sake of manhood. 
Better, for the cause of truth, 
Though your thinker be but rugged, 
And your proselyte is smooth." 

Mr. Fawcett' s ideas may be described as ultra-indi- 
vidualist in their tendency. He is an " administrative 
Nihilist," who believes that government is at best a 
necessary evil, and that the less the people .have of it, 
and the more they are left to seek thek own happiness 
in their own waj^, the better for them. In a country 
lilie Germany, with its autocracy on the one hand and 
its socialism on the other, he would be between the 
upper and the nether millstone, and would assuredly, 



84 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

politically speaking, be speedily pounded to atoms. 
Here and in the United States the tendencj^ is decid- 
edly towards a more and more comprehensive individu- 
alism ; but it is very doubtful whether, in several in- 
stances, Mr. Fawcett has not given us somewhat "too 
much of a good thing." His opposition, for example, to 
Mr. Mundella's Factory Acts Amendment Bill, limiting 
the labor of women in factories to nine hours, was, to 
say the least, an attitude of doubtful wisdom. If 
women could protect themselves from oppressive toU, 
then, of course, Mr. Fawcett was right ; if the evidence 
was the other way, then he was wrong. The question 
is one of evidence solely ; and I for one am of opinion 
that Mr. Fawcett' s judgment was not in accordance 
with the evidence. He was willing — nay, has exerted 
himself manfully — to extend the benefits of factory 
legislation to the children of agiicultural laborers, on 
the ground that they could not help themselves. How 
much better off were the majority of those for whose 
benefit the Nine Hours Bill was introduced ? In reality 
hardly any. 

Again : with respect to the licensing question, Mr. 
Fawcett' s position has somewhat too much of the 7ion 
possumus about it. The problem is one, doubtless, of 
very great dififlculty ; and certainly the Permissive Bill 
was a crude attempt to deal with it. But to tell us 
that local option is as objectionable as the Permissive 
Bill, or even more so, is to affirm one of two things, — 
either that the present licensing sj^stem is perfect and 
inviolable, or that free trade in liquor is the true 
remedy for the monstrous evils of intemperance to 
which society is on all hands admitted to be a prey. 
If no remedy is the true remedy, then we ought to 
know it. 



HENEY FAWCETT. 85 

These positions, however, which the member for 
Hackney defends with so much gallantr}^ and so little 
regard for his own popularity, are, generally speaking, 
vu-tues in excess, and cannot for a moment be permit- 
ted to weigh with any rational mind in judging of his 
career as a legislator. • 

Who can ever forget the evening when the blind 
member was the only representative of the people who 
saw his wsij into the lobby where Sir Charles Dilke and 
Mr. P. A. Taylor were tellers against the dowry to 
the Princess Louise ? What Londoner can ever be too 
grateful to him for preserving from imminent alienation 
the ancient rights of the people in Epping Forest ? If 
he had been member for Hackney at the time he was 
fighting so doggedly against the threatened enclosures, 
there might have been some suspicion that it was done 
merety to gratif}^ his constituents. As it was, not even 
that pardonable kind of self-interest can be laid to his 
charge. It will lU^ewise be long remembered by the 
skilled artisans of London with what courage and de- 
votion he acted as chairman of the late Mr. George 
Odger's committee in vSouthwark, when that republican 
artisan statesman was so near obtaining a well-merited 
seat in the legislature of his country. 

In theory Mr. Fawcett is himself a republican ; but his 
practice, alas ! has not always squared with his principle. 
But it is as the ' ' member for India ' ' that Mr. Fawcett' s 
name will be handed down to posterity. He has the 
largest constituency of any man in the world ; and his 
responsibilities have become as real as if they were im- 
posed by law. He is the true Minister for India, who- 
ever ma}^ fill the office. It is not to Lord Hartington, 
but to Henry Fawcett, that millions of Indians look for 



86 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

redress of grievances, for words of sympathy and com- 
fort. The unique position which the member for Hack- 
ney holds in the hearts of the Indian people of itself 
makes Mr. Fawcett a power in the state. His presence 
at the India office would do more to secure India than 
twenty Afghan expeditions* This being so, the minis- 
terial wisdom of his appointment as Postmaster-General 
is by no means obvious. Mr. Fawcett has been at 
enormous pains to acquaint himself with the actual 
state of India ; and yet his first application to the 
subject was more like an accident than any thing else. 
He happened to oppose, as a gross and shameful injus- 
tice, the proposal of the Government of the day to 
saddle the Indian exchequer with the cost of a i3ar- 
ticular entertainment given to the Sultan of Turkey. 
Bit by bit his knowledge of the systematic manner in 
which India is ' ' exploited ' ' by England gTew ; and he 
at last resolved to subject the whole question of Indian 
finance and Indian administration to a patient and 
searching analysis. For years he worked four hours 
every day at the tangled skein as one would for an ex- 
amination ; and, when data failed him, he had influence 
enough to secure the appointment of a parliamentar}' 
committee on Indian finance, which sat for three whole 
sessions. At the end of the investigation he had as 
fuUy mastered the subject as it was possible to do. 
He has all the more important figures by heart, and 
can hurl them with crushing eflfect at the head of who- 
ever takes it upon him to unfold the Indian budget. 
It is one of the beneficial effects, if I msij so speak, of 
Mr. Fawcett' s blindness, that he speaks, and does not 
read, his figures to the House. These, through his 
youthful but smart secretary, he selects so appropri- 



HENRY FAWCETT. 87 

ately and uses so sparingly that his financial statements 
are singularly lucid and unencumbered, each set of 
figures being the evidence of some solid argument. By 
dint of great perseverance, the country has at last, in 
some measure, been got to realize that India is as near 
as possible a sucked orange ; and that, if we do not 
retrace our steps and repent us of the evil we have been 
doing, the "brightest gem in her Majesty's diadem" 
will speedily be in pawn. At this moment an Indian 
bankruptcy stares us in the face, with all its terrible 
consequences. The limit of taxation has been reached, 
while the expenditure of the administration is unlimited 
as ever. To Mr. Fawcett, more than to any other man 
or half-dozen of men, do we owe our knowledge of the 
appalling condition of the "brightest gem," which, if 
one could imagine a gem being so ill-behaved, may 
explode any day with such violence as to shake to its 
'foundations the throne not merely of the " Empress of 
India," but that of the Queen of England also. In this 
grave relation the voice of Henry Fawcett has been as 
the voice of one cr3dng in the wilderness. If the Brit- 
ish people have not made their paths straight, it has 
not been his fault. The Indian people are frequently 
taxed by Anglo-Indians with ingratitude. I may men- 
tion, by the way, that Mr. Fawcett has not found it so. 
Some time previous to the last general election, a gi^eat 
number of very poor Hindoos subscribed a sum sufficient 
to defray the cost of his return for Hackney. The fund 
was invested for the purpose in the names of Sir Charles 
Dilke, Professor Cowell, and Mr. Dacosta. 

Mr. Fawcett is not merely an excellent platform 
speaker and a trenchant parliamentary debater, but he 
is a political economist of no mean order. His ' ' Man- 



88 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

ual of Political Economy" has run through five edi- 
tions, and ought to be in the hands of every j^outhful 
student of economic science. The " Economic Posi- 
tion of the British Laborer" is likewise a valuable con- 
tribution towards the elucidation of a painful subject ; 
while " Pauperism : its Causes and Remedies," though, 
in my opinion, mistaken in some of its conclusions, is 
3^et an eminently suggestive book. 

In addition to the above works Mr. Fawcett pub- 
lished in June, 1879, " Free Trade and Protection," one 
entire edition of which was shipped for Australia and 
the United States, while another was taken up b}^ the 
Cobden Club. There is, besides, a goodly volume of 
his collected " Speeches," which will well repay perusal, 
and another of "Essays," the conjoint production of 
Mrs. Fawcett and himself. 

In conclusion, I cannot mention the name of this ac- 
complished lady without according her my small meed 
of praise. If it was passing sad that Mr. Fawcett 
should lose the use of his own eyes, it was passing for- 
tunate that he should obtain the aid of such another 
pair. When I think of this, it almost repents me that 
I should have spoken so slightingly of the compensation 
theorists in the first paragTaph of this sketch. 



VIII. 

JOSEPH CHAMBEKLAIN. 

* ' I am your mayor. 
Few things have failed to which I set my will ; 
I do my most and best." 

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, in his days of rotundity, 
could recollect a time when he was slim enough to 
"creep through an alderman's thumb-ring." But 
there are aldermen and aldermen. The Cockney type, 
with which Shakespeare was, and we Londoners, alas ! 
are, but too familiar, is an ignorant, obese, pompous 
being, "who struts and stares and a' that," — a 
glutton and a wine-bibber, an inveterate jobber, and 
a Jingo. 

The subject of this sketch, Alderman Chamberlain, 
M.P., the renowned ex-Mayor of Birmingham, is the 
exact reverse of this picture. Of all living Englishmen 
he has deservedly earned the highest reputation as a 
municipal administrator, and he remains a pre-emi- 
nently courteous and cultivated gentleman, — a lover of 
books, of paintings, and of flowers. Indeed I have 
heard an excellent judge say of the ex-dictator of 
Birmingham, with his lithe limbs and classical features, 
that he is perhaps the best bred man in Parliament ; 
and, if he is not the most learned, he is certainly one of 
the most studious, members of the House. There is a 

89 



90 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

certain "pale cast of thought" on Mr. Chamberlain's 
youthful, handsome face, which gives an added interest 
to his charm of manner. 

Democracy, it has been alleged, both produces, and 
is partial to, coarseness in its representatives. The re- 
verse is nearer the truth. Really good manners — the 
happy way of doing things — can never be acquired in 
an exclusive or aristocratic society, by reason of the 
paucity and uniformity of the models ; and it is an in- 
disputable fact that Radical constituencies, cceteris pari- 
bus, prefer to be represented by men of culture and 
refinement. Witness the choice b}^ Paris of such repre- 
sentatives as Victor Hugo, Ledru Rollin, and Louis 
Blanc ; and by Massachusetts, of Webster, Adams, 
Charles Sumner, and many others such. If in England 
the union of culture and Radicalism is less observable, 
the reason is not far to seek. Excepting Birmingham, 
which returns Bright and Chamberlain to Parliament, 
there are scarcely any genuinely democratic constituen- 
cies in this country. We are aristocratic, and therefore 
coarse in our preferences. 

But this does not help me with the ex-mayor, who is 
not merely a thoughtful political student, but one with 
whom it is impossible to converse, however briefly, 
without discerning that he is a man of genuine good 
feeling, strict integrity, resolute purpose, and unques- 
tioning belief in the people as the only legitimate 
source of authorit}''. If he is admired by the men of 
Birmingham, the admiration is at least mutual. He is 
a singular example of a prophet who is honored in his 
own country, and who makes no concealment of his 
conviction that that country is ' ' the hub of the uni- 
verse." 



JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. 91 

His remarkable self-possession, his detractors in Par- 
liament have been pleased to call overweening self-con- 
fidence. It is reall}^ nothing of the kind. There are 
more parliaments than that mongrel thing which assem- 
bles at St. Stephen's to do little but mischief. Is there 
not the town council of Birmingham, the threshold 
of which it is as difficult for a Tory to pass as for a 
rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven ? and has not 
Mr. Chamberlain for ye-ars sat princeps inter pares in 
that Radical Witanagemot, plajdng the part of a ter- 
restrial Providence to an entire community ? If Parlia- 
ment could be constituted as the town council of 
Birmingham is constituted, then Mr. Chamberlain 
might begin to respect it. As it is, he feels that it is 
below rather than above the level of his experience. 
The parliamentary machine is vaster than the muni- 
cipal ; but its mechanism is less perfect, and the re- 
sults are ever}^ way less satisfactory. If he were asked 
whether the town council of Birmingham could not 
manage the afiairs of the nation better than the entire 
paraphernalia of Queen, Lords, and Commons, I have 
little doubt what his answer would be ; and I am not at 
all sure that he would be wrong. 

Parliament has, in fact, reached an unparalleled state 
of incompetenc}^ and inertia ; and it is onty men like 
Mr. Chamberlain, who come to it with fresh eyes and 
with an undoubted capacity for the conduct of affairs, 
that are able to estimate its performances at their true 
value. Mr. Chamberlain has shown himself to be what 
I may call a great municipal statesman ; and, being so, 
he has perpetually before him a valuable standard of 
comparison, such as is not possessed in an equal degree 
by any other member of Parliament. No one else 



92 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

stands exactly on the same political plane ; and no one 
in so brief a space — it is scarcely ten years since he 
made his first speech in suppoi-t of Mr. Dixon' s candi- 
dature for Birmingham — ever contrived to attach to 
himself a more numerous and respectable following in 
the countr}^ 

Mr. Chamberlain was born in London in July, 1836. 
He is consequently in his forty-fourth j^ear ; but in ap- 
pearance he is more like a man of thirty-four than of 
forty-four. The Chamberlains were originally a family 
of Wiltshire 3^eomanr37^, settled at Shrivenham ; but, for 
a hundred years previous to the removal of the late 
Mr. Chamberlain to Birmingham, they had carried on, 
from father to son, on the same spot in Milk Street, 
Cheapside, and under the same name, an extensive 
business as leather-merchants and shoe-manufacturers. 
In religion the family was Unitarian, and almost, as a 
matter of course, Radical in politics. " Take a thorn- 
bush," said the once renowned Abd-el-Kader, "and 
sprinkle it for a whole year with water ; it will yield 
nothing but. thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without 
culture, and it will always produce dates." And so it 
was with Mr. Chamberlain. He was not left without 
culture ; for a Unitarian upbringing is generally an edu- 
cation in itself : but for one that has since evinced so 
marked a capacity for literary expression, both spoken 
and written, his scholastic training appears to have 
been but meagre. He was, indeed, a pupil of Univer- 
sity College School for some time ; but at the esLvlj age 
of sixteen he was put to business. 

In his eighteenth year his father became one of the 
partners of the great screw-manufacturing firm of Net- 
tlefold & Chamberlain at Birmingham, and thither the 



JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. 93 

future mayor went with the family. There he devoted 
himself assiduously to the development of the paternal 
industry, which ultimately assumed gigantic propor- 
tions, the firm employing as many as two thousand 
" hands." Throughout, emploj^'ers and employed were 
on the best of terms ; and when, in 1875, Mr. Chamber- 
lain, after his father's death, finally retired from the 
business in order to devote himself exclusivelj' to the 
public service, he did so with an ample fortune and 
the best wishes of the numerous operatives of the firm, 
who embraced the opportunity to bestow on him a hand- 
some token of their regard in the shape of a valuable piece 
of plate. Mr. Chamberlain has oftener than once acted 
as an arbitrator in labor disputes, and alwaj's with the 
utmost fairness and good sense ; his most notable award, 
perhaps, being one which substituted a sliding-scale for 
a fixed rate in the memorable coal-mining strike in 
Stafi'ordshire in 1873-74. 

Mr. Chamberlain was thhty-two jesiYS of age before 
he ever addressed his fellow-citizens ; and he at once 
made his mark as a singularly clear, articulate, method- 
ical speaker. The fact is peculiar, but not altogether 
inexplicable. For ^'-ears before, he had been a diligent 
reader, utilizing all his spare time in his library, the 
shelves of which are filled with some three thousand 
well-selected volumes. He had thus acquhed much 
knowledge ; and, what with a ready tongue and rare 
nerve, he felt fully equipped for the brilliant public 
career on which he entered in 1868. 

Onerous and honorable duties were at once thrust on 
him. In 1868 he accepted the chairmanship of the 
famous Education League, and in the same year he 
became a member of the town council. In 1870 he was 



94 



EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



returned as one of the members of the School Board of 
Bu-mingham ; and in 1873, when the Secularists, so 
called, secured a majority on the board, he was elected 
chahman. In 1873 he was likewise unanimousl}' elect- 
ed mayor, and in 1874 and 1875 a similar honor awaited 
him. At the general election in 1874 he contested 
Sheffield in the Radical interest ; but the town of Roe- 
buck, Broadhead, and " The Sheffield Telegraph," knew 
itself better than to seek the services of so reputable a 
representative. He was at the bottom of the poll, the 
" frightful example" to all Radicals, Roebuck being at 
the top. An arm}^ of one thousand five hundred publi- 
cans worked night and day for this result. The whole 
town was given over to indescribable riot ; and Mr. 
Chamberlain, who exhibited the greatest personal inti'e- 
pidity and good humor, was oftener than once exposed 
to serious risks. Roebuck, singularl3^,^enough, was 
supported by " The Daily News." Nol^^many months 
elapsed, however, before Mr. Dixon retired from the 
representation of Birmingham, and the mayor took his 
place in Parliament unopposed. 

One event that occurred in Mr. Chamberlain's may- 
oralty I must not forget. In November, 1874, the 
Prince of Wales practically invited himself to Birming- 
ham, and much curiosity was felt as to the manner in 
which the mayor would receive the heir- apparent. Mr. 
Chamberlain has never concealed his preference for 
republican institutions, and the visit was necessarily of 
a somewhat embarrassing character. Na}^, more, the 
court ])8iYty probablj^ intended it to embarrass. The}^ 
had scored an immense triumph, and they were deter- 
mined to follow it up by bearding Radicalism at head- 
quarters. They had succeeded in cementing the 



JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIISr. 95 

shattered reputation of his 'Royal Highness with surpris- 
ing cunning. After the theatrical and almost blasphe- 
mous apotheosis of the prince at St. Paul's on the 
occasion of his recovery from an illness which it would 
take a great deal to convince me was not purposely 
exaggerated, it was evidently felt that almost sluj thing 
might be attempted in the way of humbugging the 
people. Vult populus decipi et decipiatur . The repub- 
lican mayor was to be put on his metal ; and what he 
did was this : he agreed to receive the prince as the 
guest of the town ; but he voted against defraying any 
portion of the expenses of the royal visit out of the 
public rates. Rather than that, he would be host him- 
self. For the rest, to have received the young man at 
all, Mr. Chamberlain could not have gone through the 
performance with less offence to republican feeling. 
His language was a miracle of dexterous steering be- 
tween lojslij^ the people and loj'^altj' to the prince, — 
two interests forever incompatible. All the same his 
Royal Highness had the best of it. What royalty want- 
ed was a big gratis advertisement at the expense of the 
Radical Mecca, and it got it. The British monarchy 
exists, as quack medicines exist, by dint of wholesale 
"puffing;" the only difference being that the first is 
gratuitously advertised by its dupes, while notices of 
the latter are paid for by the parties directly interested. 
Now the naayor unquestionably placed himself among 
the dupes of royalty ; but I am free to admit he was in 
a strait place. 

But Mr. Chamberlain' s mayoralty was distinguished 
by more useful, if less ornamental, work than that of 
entertaining worthless princes. In the successive years 
during which he presided over the town council with 



96 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

consummate tact and administrative talent, he coura- 
geously grappled with three gi'eat questions aifecting the 
welfare of the borough. UnlUie most towns of more 
ancient date, Birmingham possessed no revenue but the 
rates when Mr. Chamberlain took office. He looked 
about, and soon found another source of civic income. 
He resolved that Birmingham should no longer be at 
the mercy of private companies for its gas-supply. He 
made up his mind that the corporation should possess 
itself of the undertakings of the Birmingham Gas- 
light and Coke Company, and of the Birmingham and 
Staffordshire Gaslight Companj^, and he was man- 
fully backed by the council. And with what result? 
In three years' time four hundred thousand dollars have 
been appropriated in aid of the rates, two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars allocated as a reserve fund, two 
hundred thousand dollars as a sinking fund ; while the 
cost of gas to the consumers has been reduced twelve 
cents per thousand cubic feet, being equivalent to' a 
saving of three hundred thousand dollars per annum. 

Having thus disposed of the two gas companies' 
undertaldngs, Mr. Chamberlain next resolved to deal 
with that of the Birmingham Waterworks Company. 
It also, after the inevitable calculations, negotiations, 
and parliamentary action, became the property of the 
corporation ; and, though it has not been deemed advis- 
able to raise revenue out of such a primary necessary 
of life as water, a good reserve fund has been laid past, 
and a thoroughly efficient supply secured to the com- 
munity. 

Like other towns, Birmingham is not without its 
' ' slums ; ' ' and to these the mayor next tm-ned his 
attention. Taking advantage of the provisions of the 



JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. 97 

Artisans' Dwellings Improvement Act, and borrowing 
at the three and a half per cent rate, the corporation 
has ah'eady purchased for the sum of seven million 
five hundred thousand dollars the area covered by all 
the vilest habitations in the borough. The act em- 
powers the municipal authorities to pull down, but 
not to re-erect. The private individuals, however, to 
whom the corporation may convey a title, will have 
to rebuild under conditions conformable to the health 
of the community and to the special convenience of the 
working-class. It need surprise no one if Mr. Cham- 
berlain be yet found to have been a better sort of 
Haussman to Birmingham. 

Nor are the daring schemes of this municipal in- 
novator yet exhausted. Not content with giving the 
people light, water, and wholesome dwellings, he is the 
author of a scheme to make them the proprietors of 
their own public-houses ; and, from the favorable man- 
ner in which the Lords' Committee on Intemperance 
have spoken of his proposals, it is not at all unlikely 
that Parliament will permit the capital of the midlands 
to make the experiment which her ex-mayor desires. 

What he proposes is, that the corporation should 
possess itself of all the public-houses in Birmingham, — 
some eighteen hundred in number, — the owners having 
first been expropriated on a scale of compensation 
fixed by the legislature. Thereupon one thousand are 
to be abolished at a stroke, and the remainder equipped 
in such a manner as to supply aU. the legitimate wants 
of the communit}^ And the scheme, he calculates, will 
pay, and pay well. 

It has several obvious advantages. The servants of 
the corporation would, unlike the publicans, have no 



98 EMINENT LIBEEALS IN PAKLIAMENT. 

interest either in the insohriet}^ of their customers or 
the adulteration of the liquor sold. The poor man's 
drink would be as good as the rich man's, which is far 
from being the case at present ; the political power of 
the publican would be annihilated ; and last, not least, 
the necessit}' for police espionage would be almost at 
an end. There is no one cure for drunkenness : but 
this seems as feasible as any for a great community ; 
and, if the ratepaj^ers of Birmingham are willing to risk 
their money in giving so bold an application of the 
Gothenburg S3'stem a fair trial, there can be no reason 
in the world why the}' should be restrained. It may 
be that Birmingham is destined to initiate a public- 
house reform as contagious as has been the example 
which she has set to other places in respect, for ex- 
ample, of education and Liberal organization. 

As chairman of the School Board of Birmingham, 
and as president of the National Education League, 
Mr. Chamberlain has achieved neai'h' as great things 
in the educational as in the municipal world. Under 
his chairmanship of the Binningham boai'd, a complete 
separation was effected between secular and religious 
instruction, w^hile fom'teen thousand live hundred chil- 
dren were added to the boai'd schools, and nine 
thousand seven hundred to the denominational. The 
league, of course, was not able to embody its ideal of 
a free, universal, compulsor}', and seculai' system of 
education ; but all the same it did a world of good in 
curbing the vagaries of Mr. Forster, and the insolent 
pretensions of churchmen. 

In 1876 the league was dissolved ; but its spuit j^et 
liveth, and may perchance before long take unto itself 
a new bod}'. Should this uot be so, its programme is 



JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. 99 

nevertheless as certain to be ultimately realized as has 
been the case with the ' ' points ' ' of the ' ' People' s 
Charter." 

It is unnecessary to enlarge further on Mr. Chamber- 
lain's local achievements. He has a manifest genius 
for administrative detail, and, as President of the Board 
of Trade, it is universally acknowledged that he is in his 
right place. His speeches in Parliament on the County 
Boards Bill and the Prisons Bill would alone have 
stamped him as a master of every thing that pertains 
to a " spirited domestic policy," of which the country 
stands so much in need, and of which the evil spirit of 
Jingo has permitted it to hear so little. 

Mr. Chamberlain, however, has greater claims on the 
Liberal party than any that I have yet adduced, and 
these are of a special and most important character. 
When our spirits have failed us, and the majority have 
seemed disposed to be "led," — whither, our "lead- 
ers" would not or could not tell us, — he has always 
come cheerily up in the pages of " The Fortnightly" 
with a new "programme" to put in our hands. He 
has rallied us to the cry of free land, free church, free 
schools, and free labor ; and, when that was not enough, 
he has set himself to "re-organize" and put us in 
marching order with our faces to the foe. Like all 
true men and brave spirits, he is greatest and most 
helpful in adversity. For why ? Is he not the father 
of the much-derided, much- denounced "caucus," which 
is yet destined to be such an important factor in the 
political life of England ? 

Mr. Chamberlain, however, claims no special credit 
in connection with the so-called caucus. He simply 
regards it as in some form inevitable, and therefore he 



100 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

tries to make the most of it. With the old restricted 
franchise, when the electors were a select and privileged 
class, no such party discipline was required. A caucus 
in the English sense is simply an elected committee. 
Sixty voters may require no such committee to prepare 
their business for them, simply because they are practi- 
cally a committee already. It is quite another matter 
when the numbers rise to six hundred, or six thousand, 
or sixteen thousand, as the case may be. Then some 
understanding must be come to, some suitable machinery 
must be devised to give effect to the general desires. 
In such circumstances the English race naturall}^ and 
instinctively have recourse to popular election to rectify 
matters ; and this, after all, is the worst sin that can be 
laid at the door of the " caucus." The great matter, 
Mr. Chamberlain insists, is to insm-e that your hundred, 
three hundred, or six hundred be truly representative of 
the party voters. If that is secured, all is well ; if not, 
not. Whoever distrusts the caucus honestly worked, 
distrusts the people as the true source of power. The 
part}^ vote need not be one whit less honestly recorded 
because it is informal. Such, as I understand it, is 
Mr. Chamberlain's position, and it seems wellnigh un- 
answerable. What then are the advantages of such an 
organization of the Liberal forces ? They are various. 
One is, and it is perhaps the most obvious, that it tends 
to put a strong check on what Scotsmen call " divisive 
courses" at elections. At the general election of 1874 
twenty-six votes on a division were lost to the Liberal 
cause through a suicidal multiplication of Liberal candi- 
dates at the polls ! There is, however, it must be ad- 
mitted, another and a much more certain method of 
preventing such disasters; viz., the French method 



JOSEPH CHAMBEHLAIN. 101 

of compelling by law a second ballot where no one can- 
didate has secured a clear majority of the voters. 

It is perhaps too much to expect that any such sensi- 
ble rule will ever be adopted by the British legislature ; 
but Mr. Chamberlain admits that is the true remedy, 
although that provided by the caucus is, of course, not 
inconsistent with it. But it is not on this ground so 
much that Mr. Chamberlain justifies the caucus. He 
regards it as an invaluable school for political instruc- 
tion. Nor is that all. The National Liberal Federa- 
tion, of which Mr. Chamberlain is president, has in 
more than one sudden emergency shown a promptitude 
in bringing pressure to bear on the Government b}^ 
means of powerful deputations and concerted public 
meetings that never could have been rivalled by any 
conceivable isolated action. ■ Mr. Bright, in introdu- 
cing to Lords Hartington and Granville the great na- 
tional deputation in favor of peace, summoned by the 
federation and the National Reform Union, pointedly 
described it as " a remarkable deputation, such a one 
as" I have not seen before in mj political experience." 
Of course, with a more constitutional Premier than Bea- 
consfield at the helm of the state, the occasions on 
which the federation will require to review its forces 
will be few and far between ; but certainly, in the light 
of the late " imperial " menace, the Liberal party owes 
the president of the federation a deep debt of gTatitude 
for the disinterested sagacity he displayed in striving to 
furnish it with such a potent weapon of defence ready 
to its hand. 

The National Liberal Federation was constituted at 
Birmingham in May, 1877 ; and Mr. Gladstone, it will 
be remembered, was one of its sponsors. It then num- 



102 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PAKLIAMENT. 

bered fortj^-six associations ; it has now risen to over a 
hundred, and every week adds to its strength and effi- 
ciency. At the late general election the caucus vindi- 
cated its power with such emphasis wherever it had 
taken root, that, from the election agent's point of view, 
the Liberal victory was its victory. It combines in a 
marvellous manner complete local autonomy with a ca- 
pacity for concerted action something like that which 
existed amongst the Hanse Towns of the middle ages. 
Mr. Chamberlain has done surprising things as a party 
organizer ; but this is distinctly his masterpiece. 



IX. 

THOMAS BURT. 

** Go far and go sparing; 
For you'll find it certain, 
The poorer and baser you appear, 
The more you'll look through still." 

THE results of the general election of 1874 were 
surprising in many respects, and to many persons, 
but probably to none more so than Mr. Thomas Burt, 
M.P. While other prospective legislators were study- 
ing or wassailing at Oxford and Cambridge, the honor- 
able member for Morpeth was laboriously ransacking 
the bowels of the earth in grimy Northumberland for 
coals wherewith to supply the complex wants of the 
British public. Like Goldsmith's village preacher, " he 
ne'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place ; " 
and, when his fellows first advised him of their intention 
to bring him forward as a candidate for parliamentary 
honors, he replied in the words of the anti-Utopian, — 

" O brothers! speak of possibilities, 
And do not break into these wild extremes." 

But elected he was to take his seat among his "bet- 
ters ' ' — among lordlings and milUonnalres — in the 
choicest of West-end metropolitan clubs, and that, too, 
with an ease which contrasted sharply with the ill suc- 
cess in other constituencies of more widely known " la- 
bor candidates." 

103 



104 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

This efltect, howen^er, was not without an efficient 
cause. Apart from the fact that the Morpeth register 
was in a condition exceptionally favorable to the return 
of a genuine working-man, Mr. Burt was in reality, 
with all his seeming diffidence and meagre presence, an 
exceedingly formidable candidate. He is able and 
"canny" to a degree, and conspicuously devoid of 
those faults that do more easily beset trades-union 
leaders. He never, for example, speaks on any sub- 
ject with which he is not thoroughly conversant, and 
his range of topics is by no means limited. He never 
tells you on the first occas-ion that j^ou are alone with 
him, that every other exponent of the claims of labor, 
except himself, is a fool or a knave ; and, when he 
makes an engagement, he keeps it with all the punctu- 
ality of a good middle-class man of business who 
knows the value of time. He is, in truth, a singularly 
fair-minded man, as capable of looking at any issue 
arising in the labor market from the point of view oif 
the emploj^'er as of the employed. From contact and 
observation he has learned to combine, in a great meas- 
ure, the characteristic virtues of both classes, while 
discarding their special vices. His s^anpathies are, of 
course, entkely with the working-man ; but the impar- 
tiahty of his judgment saves him from au}^ thing like 
indiscriminate partisanship . 

His workingmanism, too, is of such a catholic kind as 
practically to obliterate the hateful distinctions of class 
altogether. It does not stop at hand-workers, but em- 
braces all honest brain-workers as well. It is only 
with the monstrous army of rojsil and aristocratic Do- 
nothings and Eat-alls, which in this England of ours is 
permitted to such an unparalleled extent to la}^ waste 



THOMAS BUET. 105 

the harvest of honest industry, that Mr. Burt is at war. 
In politics he is a very intelligent English Radical, and 
nothing more. He is actuated by no Socialistic or 
subversive passions ; and, if he gives the best portion 
of his legislative attention to the interests of his own 
class, it is simply because he thinks, and thinks justly, 
that these are the most neglected at St. Stephen's. 
We hear of "officers and gentlemen." If he is a 
workman, he is likewise a gentleman. Like the late 
Mr. Odger, he has succeeded in completely emanci- 
pating hunself from the warping influences of class 
feeling ; and by dint of a severe course of reading and 
reflection he has arrived at conceptions of the public 
good which may be truly called statesmanlike. There 
are not many men in Parliament regarding whom it 
would be honest to aver as much. But the politics of 
the pit are manifestly more enlightened, more national 
in scope, than those of church or castle, bar or barrack- 
room ; and, if Mr. Thomas Burt be a fair specimen of 
"pitmen" politicians, I have no hesitation in saying 
that it is a misfortune for the country that there are so 
few of them in the House. Wonderful to relate, he 
represents his constituents in Parliament, not himself. 
In the path of such a man, if the truth were told, at 
least as many snares are apt to be laid at Westminster 
as at Washington ; and, to my certain knowledge, Mr. 
Burt has, on more occasions than one, resisted the 
machinations of the tempter with scrupulous fidelity. 

Mr. Burt was born at Murton Row, a small hamlet 
about two miles from North Shields, Northumberland, 
in November, 1837. His ancestors, needless to say, 
did not " come over at the Conquest." The fact is not 
recorded ; but I believe they were in England long 



lOG EMINENT LIBEKALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

before that great national calamity. His father, Peter 
Burt, was an upright, hard-working miner, much 
addicted in his spare hours, if he may be said to have 
enjoyed such, to Primitive Methodism, trades-unionism, 
and reading. He was a "local preacher ;/' and his 
literary tastes, as may be readily imagined, had a strong 
theological bias. But he was distinctly a superior man, 
and no mere narrow-minded sectarian. The truly apos- 
tolic Channing was among his treasured authors, — an 
insignificant fact perhaps in itself, but one which helped 
materially to stimulate the youthful intelligence of his 
son, and to cast his character in a noble mould. 

Thomas Burt' s mother was likewise no ordinary per- 
son. She possessed a solid judgment and a tender 
heart ; and while she lived she was the angel of the 
lowly household, which saw many ups and downs before 
the member for Morpeth reached man's estate. 

When Burt was but seven years of age, the great 
Northumberland strike began ; and he thus earty tasted 
something of the bitter fruit of these labor struggles, 
which he has since exerted himself so strenuously to 
avert. Burt, senior, being a prominent striker, his 
family, with many others, was evicted from its humble 
abode, and might have perished from exposure but for 
the benevolent intervention of a neighboring farmer, 
who contrived to accommodate no fewer than three 
households in two small rooms. At the end of the 
strike, Burt's father, being a "marked man," and re- 
garding discretion as the better part of valor, retreated 
to Helton, in the county of Durham, where he found 
employment for about a yeai\ Subsequently the family 
moved to Haswell Blue House, — a hamlet midway 
between Haswell and Sholton Collieries ; and in the 



THOMAS BURT. 107 

former of these mines Thomas Burt, M.P., commenced 
work as a "trapper" on his tenth birthday. His 
schooling had necessarily been of an irregular kind ; 
and though not without — 

" The gleams and glooms that dart 

Across the schoolboy's brain, 
The song and the silence in the heart, 
That in part are prophecies, and in part 

Are longings wild and vain,"— 

Burt entered the Inferno of Haswell Colliery without 
having exhibited any conspicuous talent ; and, to all 
appearance, the gates of night closed remorselessly 
behind him. 

It may be of interest to those, if there be any such, 
who still believe in the luxurious miner of the news- 
paper legend, with his curious taste in champagne, 
pianos, and greyhounds, to know something of the hon- 
orable member's underground experiences; and these, 
I may premise, were by no means exceptional. He 
commenced as a "trapper," at twenty cents per day 
of twelve hours. A "trapper" is a doorkeeper who 
sat, or sits, in utter darkness, peering wistfully into the 
' ' palpable obscure ' ' for the approach of any mortal 
with a lamp. Such occupation might suit a notorious 
criminal of a philosophical turn of mind, but none 
other. Promotion, however, soon came Mr. Burt's 
way. He became a subterranean " donkej^'-driver," 
and his wages rose eight cents per diem. Then fol- 
lowed " management of an inclined plane " at Sherburn 
House Pit, between Durham and Thornley, wages from 
thirty-two to thu-ty-six cents ; and, later, two years' 
" putting," or pony-driving, at Dalton Colliery, wages 
from thu'ty-six to fifty cents per diem. In 1851 the 



108 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

family ceased to sojourn in Durham, and returned to 
its native Northumberland, settling ultimately for a 
period of eight or nine j^ears at Seaton Delaval. Here 
further promotion awaited young Burt. He became a 
"water-leader," and his wages varied from sixty to 
eighty-four cents per day. " Water-leading " is not a 
specially amusing occupation. Before you know where 
3'ou are, you are frequently up to the waist in the sub- 
terranean liquid, which has about as much fancy for 
being "led" as a Tipperary pig. Add to this that the 
hours of labor, though nominally twelve, were practi- 
cally thirteen " from bank to bank," and that the dis- 
tance to and from home was a good two miles' walk, 
and it will readily be granted that the honorable mem- 
ber for Morpeth' s opportunities for self-culture were in 
no way enviable. 

At fifteen years of age he had, besides, recklessly 
cut himself off from the consolation of champagne by 
becoming a total abstainer ; and somewhat later he had 
to cure an inherited weakness for the cultivation of 
music, simpty because he had no time to spare. In his 
eighteenth year, however, he graduated as a pitman. 
He became a " hewer," and his wages rose as high as 
a dollar or even a dollar and a quarter per diem, the 
hours of labor sensibly diminishing at the same time. 

And so on Mr. Burt went, "toiling, rejoicing, sor- 
rowing," till the autumn of 1865, when he was elected 
b}^ his brother-workmen general secretary of the North- 
umberland Miners' Association. Then, after eighteen 
3^ears of unremitting undergTound toil, and the usual 
miners' hairbreadth escapes with his life, Mr. Burt got 
permanently to the surface ; and eight years later his 
apparition startled the " rich men" at St. Stephen's. 



THOMAS BUET. 109 

From pit to Parliament is assuredly a long way and 
an arduous. It may not be a very great or even de- 
sirable distinction to be able to write M.P. after one's 
name ; but nobod}^ will deny, that to earn the right, as 
matters stand, is an achievement of almost fabulous 
difficulty for a man that has neither birth nor wealth to 
recommend hun. In Mr. Bm-t' s case both these pass- 
ports to electoral influence were conspicuous only by 
their absence ; jet here he is with perhaps as attached 
a constituency as any in England behind him. Other 
members pay vast sums for the honor of being per- 
mitted to represent their constituents in Parliament. 
Here, on the contrary, you have a body of electors who 
voluntarily tax themselves in order to pay their member 
a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars a jear. for 
representing them. Was there ever a more daring out- 
rage on constitutional propriety ? And, what is stranger 
still, this phenomenal member, whose praises are alilie 
in the mouths of ministerialists and opposition, is an 
avowed foe of royalty and aristocracy, of "beer and 
the Bible." There is scarcely' an " ism," from repub- 
licanism downwards, that he cannot swallow without so 
much as making a wr}^ face. Since Andrew Marvell's 
time there has been no such marvel in Parliament as 
Thomas Burt, the chosen of Morpeth. 

At about fifteen years of age he began, all uncon- 
sciousty of course, to educate himself for the discharge 
of his present responsible duties. And he educated 
himself to some purpose. While "his companions 
slept," this physically feeble but mentally strong 
Northumbrian miner was ' ' toiling upwards in the 
night." He eschewed the public-house, and kept the 
very best society, — the society of Channing, Milton, 



110 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



Emerson, and Carlj-le ; of Shakespeare, Tennj^son, 
Longfellow, Wordsworth, Shellej^, and Burns ; of Burke, 
Grattan, and Curran ; of Macaulaj^ Gibbon, and Hume ; 
of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot ; of 
Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Bastiat, Fawcett, Thorn- 
ton, and other illustrious intellects. Latin and French 
he hammered out as best he could from the pages of 
" Cassell's Popular Educator," while Euclid and short- 
hand received no inconsiderable share of his attention. 
And whatever he read he mastered, and assunilated 
with a rare appreciation of all that he found true and 
beautiful. 

Then came the application of all this acquirement, — 
a ti'ue and beneficent application. He did not wrap 
his talents in a napkin, but devoted them ungrudgingly 
to the elevation of his fellow- workmen. He lectured 
on temperance, trades-unionism, arbitration, co-opera- 
tion, education, the advantages of mechanics' insti- 
tutes, politics, and gTaduall}^ became a clear, judicious, 
and convincing public speaker. He was a Sunda}^- 
school teacher, a da3'^-school secretar}^, and an organizer 
of temperance societies. He came to read men, as he 
had read books, with intelligence and S3anpath3' ; and 
the miners on then- pai-t were quick and generous to 
discern that they had found in tliek fellow-workman a 
true friend and able counsellor. 

In 1800 the Burts left Seaton Delaval, and settled at 
Choppington, now a portion of the paiiiamentar}' bor- 
ough of Morpeth ; and here it was that the gi*eat 
administrative talents of the honorable member first 
displaj^ed themselves. He speedil}" became the dele- 
gate of the Choppington men, and ultimately, in 18G5, 
general secretary of the Northumbrian Miners' Mutual 
Confident Association. 



THOMAS BURT. Ill 

The union was then under a heav}^ cloud. There 
was but one hundred and fifteen dollars in the 
exchequer, and an extensive strike — the Craniling1:on 
— was proceeding. The new secretary was bitterly 
attacked by " A Coalowner ' ' in the columns of ' ' The 
Newcastle Chronicle." He replied with characteristic 
dignity and spirit. ' ' I was chosen agent for this asso- 
ciation," he wrote, " for the purpose of doing the best 
I could to aid the workmen in securing justice. I did 
not force mj^self on the men ; they urged me to take 
the office ; and, as soon as they can dispense with my 
services, I am prepared to resign. But so long as I am 
in office I will do my best to serve my emploj^ers. 
Four months since I was a hewer at Choppiugton Col- 
liery. As a working-man I was in comfortable circum- 
stances, serving employers whom I respected, and who, 
I believe, respected me. I had been at that colliery 
nearly six years, and during that time I had never a 
wrong word with an official of the colliery. ' A Coal- 
owner ' may ask there whether I was a ' demagogue ' or 
an ' agitator.' I left the colliery honorably, and I have 
no doubt I can get my work again at that place if I 
want it. If not, I can get work, I doubt not, else- 
where, and under good employers too ; for I long since 
made up my mind not to work for a tyrant. I say this 
merely to let your readers know that the position I hold 
is not degrading either to myself or the men who em- 
ploy me." 

Largely as the result of this rare combination of 
moderation and firmness on the part of the secretary, 
external aid flowed freely into the coffers of the asso- 
ciation. When the strike ended, a surplus of thirty- 
five hundred dollars remained over. 



112 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

B}^ Mr. Burt's advice this sum, instead of being 
divided among the several collieries in the union, was 
made the nucleus of a central fund, which in a few 
years increased to eight}^ thousand dollars, while the 
membership of the union was quadrupled. 

Though in Parliament, Mr. Burt is still the adviser- 
general and appellant-judge of the association, whose 
solidarity and wise counsels have done so much to 
inspire both employers and employed in Northumber- 
land with feelings of amity and mutual respect. 
Recentl}^ there has been a sensible decline in the mem- 
bership of the union, owing chiefly to the wholesale 
depopulation of certain districts consequent on the pro- 
longed depression of trade and the enforced stoppage of 
the less remunerative pits. Within the last three and 
a half years the miners of Northumberland, to then' 
credit be it recorded, have expended nearly eighty-five 
thousand dollars in support of brethren thus thrown 
out of emplo^onent. Indeed, that they should have 
hitherto been able to face the crisis so manfully and 
eflEicientl}^ can only be regarded as another miracle of 
thrift and self-sacrifice worthy of the men who, by 
returning Mr. Burt to Parliament as then- " paid mem- 
ber," were the pioneers of one of the most necessary 
and important political reforms of the futm-e. 

The circumstances attending the return of the mem- 
ber for Morpeth to Parliament have never yet received 
the general attention and commendation they deserve. 
They were most remarkable. Two pitmen, Mr. Robert 
Elliot (a poet of no mean merit) and Mr. Thomas 
Glassej", along with two brothers, Drs. James and 
Robert Trotter, local medical practitioners, did the 
heaviest portion of the electioneering, which, at the 



THOMAS BURT. 113 

height of the Tory re-action, resulted in 3,332 votes 
being recorded for Mr. Burt, against 585 for his amiable 
Tory opponent, Major Duncan. Never was there such 
unbounded enthusiasm. The prophet of Choppington 
was indeed honored in his own country. His election 
expenses were defraj^ed by public subscription. He had 
nothing to do but address the electors, and prepare to 
draw his parliamentary salar3^ which, if not large, is 
perhaps amply sufficient for his modest wants and 
limited deskes. At the late general election the Con- 
servatives dared not even challenge his seat. 

Well may Morpeth, the borough of the derided 
" Howkies," with their short lives, — computed to 
reach an average of only twenty-eight 3'ears, — their 
sore toil and pitiable pay, say to the most virtuous con- 
stituency in the kingdom, "Go thou and do likewise." 

" Go on until this land revokes 
The old and chartered lie, 
The feudal curse whose whips and yokes 
Insult humanity." 

And, as for the fortunate member for Morpeth, he 
has in Parliament, I think, redeemed all the legitimate 
expectations that were formed of him. His speeches 
on the Count}^ Franchise Bill, on the Employers' Liabil- 
ity for Injury Bill, on the grants to Wales and Con- 
naught, and, above all, his hearty denunciation of the 
Afghan war, leave nothing to be desked. 

With regard to the Medical Bill, he showed somewhat 
too great a confidence in quack doctors and unlicensed 
bone-setters ; but that is a small matter. 

For the rest, as I have said before, his conduct in the 
House has evoked the praise of all parties. The worst 



114 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

of Tories admit that he is " fair," and herein perhaps 
hirks a danger for the member for Morpeth. Reformers 
of great wrongs cannot afford to cultivate this spirit of 
fairness to excess. Be fair, be fair, be not too fair ! 
"• Beware ye when all men speak well of you, for so did 
they of the false proj^hets that were before vou." 



X. 

HENRY RICHARD. 

" And evermore beside him on Ms way 
The unseen Christ shall move." 

IN the House of Commons are to be found a good 
many members who profess the Christian rehgion, — 
at all events in public ; but, excepting Mr. Henry 
Richard, there are very few, so far as I know, who 
make the smallest pretence of literally squaring their 
politics by the precepts of the New Testament. The 
politics of Rome and of Canterbury — of the Papal 
and Anglican priesthoods — are, of course, well repre- 
sented at St. Stephen's ; but thek relation to Christianity 
proper is so remote, or indeed antagonistic, as to merit 
no recognition in this connection. They are merely 
ecclesiastical intrigues, and in no true sense Christian 
or even religious in their aim or tendency. But Mr. 
Richard's position is different. He is distinctly a Chris- 
tian politician, and herein lies his strength or weakness 
as a legislator. The estimable ' ' Apostle of Peace ' ' 
is, wonderful to relate, a gospel Radical, and it is by 
that difficult standard that it will be necessary in some 
measure to try him. He believes that Christianity sup- 
plies the politician, as it does the individual, with a true, 
or rather the true, conduct-chart ; and his pamphlet, 
" On the Application of Christianity to Politics," leaves 

115 



116 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

US in no doubt as to his canons of biblical interpreta- 
tion. 

" I have no hope," he tells us, " for the future of 
this world that is not connected with Christianity." 
When ' ' every thought shall have been brought into 
captivity to the obedience of Christ," then only will 
Mr. Richard feel satisfied that we are politically on the 
right rail. There are not two moralities, he maintains, 
— a private and a public, a personal and a political. 
Mr. Richard' s method with the Jingoes is the shortest 
of any. Is it not written, "Thou shalt not kill"? 
Therefore is the occupation of the soldier forever cursed, 
cursing alike conqueror and conquered. According to 
this exegesis, such gallant Christians as Sir Henry 
Havelock and Capt. Hedley Vicars of pious memory 
were little better than public cut-throats or licensed 
murderers. So be it. Mr. Richard will shrink from 
none of the consequences of his understanding of Holy 
Writ. The commandment is absolute. "Avenge not 
yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath ; for it is 
written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the 
Lord." "Resist not evil." "See that none render 
evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which 
is good, both among yourselves and to all men." " If 
ye do well and suflEer for it, and ye take it patiently, 
this is acceptable unto God." 

These are hard words for flesh and blood to apply 
literally; but Mr. Richard, in his "Defensive War," 
makes it plain that he will, no more than Hosea Biglow, 
admit of any dodging : — 

"If ye take a sword and dror it, 
And go stick a feller through, 
Guv'ment ain't to answer for it: 
God will send the bill to you." 



HENRY EICHARD. 117 

If a robber assail you with murderous intent, there are 
"three courses" open to you. You may expostuUte 
with him on the error of his ways ; you may exert mod- 
erate force to restrain him from burdening his soul with 
a great crime ; and, lastly, you may exhibit true moral 
courage b}^ running away as fast as ever your legs will 
carry you : but on no account are you to lay the flatter- 
ing unction to your soul that, under any circumstances, 
is there such a thing as "justifiable homicide " possible. 
Similarly with regard to other questions of vital public 
interest, — such as the support of religion by state, 
whether in church or school, — the member for Merthyr 
finds something like absolute prohibitions where the 
great majority of professing Christians appear to dis- 
cover the reverse. 

How wonderful is Mr. Richard in his exegesis ! 
How wonderful are the majority of Christians in theirs ! 
How marvellously malleable are the memorials of the 
Christian faith themselves ! Humanly speaking, one 
would say some of them must be at fault, but which, I 
am pleased to think, it is not my province to determine. 
Infidel Radicals are, in these days of general apostasy, 
as thick as blackberries. It is refreshing occasionally — 
for the sake of variet}", if for nothing else — to encounter 
one who is thoroughly orthodox. " The stone which 
the builders rejected, the same is become the head of 
the corner." Nor am I unmindful of the warning, 
"And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be 
broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind 
him to powder." Suffice it for my purpose to postu- 
late that Mr. Richard is as good a Radical as he is a 
Christian, and that with him the terms are in a great 
measure convertible. May Heaven multiply this par- 



118 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

ticular school of Christians ! for never were they more 
sorely needed than at present. 

" Keep thou the childlike heart 
That shall His kingdom be ; 
The soul pure-eyed that wisdom led 
E'en now His blessed face shall see." 

Henry Richard, M. P., was born at the little town 
of Tregaron, Cardiganshire, in 1812. The locality is 
peculiarly Welsh in all its aspects ; and the ' ' member 
for Wales " is, as is befitting, of pure Welsh descent, 
his mother's maiden name having been Williams. His 
father and grandfather were both ministers of the 
Calvinistic Methodist persuasion, the latter for the long 
space of sixty years. In one of his addresses to his 
constituents at MerthjT, Mr. Richard told them, with 
manifest pride, "that he had come of a good stock, 
who had served Wales well in days gone by." And 
so it was. His father, the Rev. Ebenezer Richard of 
Tregaron, was no ordinary man. Welshmen, even 
more than Scotsmen, appear to benefit by the kind of 
instruction which is convej^ed in ' ' sermons ; * ' and 
Richard, senior, was a powerful preacher, the memory 
of whose pulpit oratory is still cherished in South 
Wales. Nor was he prominent only in spiritual things. 
For man}' 3^ears he was general secretary to his denom- 
ination : and, along with the Rev. Thomas Charles of 
Bala, he conferred on the principalit}^ what was at the 
time an inestimable boon;" viz., a thoroughly compre- 
hensive S3'stem of Sunday-school education, which had 
regard to the wants of adults as well as of juveniles. 

His home at Tregaron was the rallying-point of 
much of the religious and philanthi'opic activity of 



HENRY EICHAKD. 119 

South Wales. The chief actors concerned believed, 
and not without reason, that they were engaged in a 
work no less momentous than the regeneration of the 
principality ; and their earnestness, as might have been 
expected, made an indelible impression on the open 
mind of young Eichard, whose earliest memories are 
of fervent "revivals," " seasons of refreshing," &c. 

From the doctrines imbibed in his childhood he has 
never appreciably departed ; yet the tenacity with 
which he sticks to his creed is not to be confounded 
with bigotry. In the sphere of civil action there is not 
in all England a more enlightened advocate of the 
broadest freedom. His human S3'mpathies are as gen- 
erous and keen as they were fifty years ago. In his 
case there has been none of that — 

'* Hardening of the heart that brings 
Irreverence for the dreams of youth," 

such as, I am bound to say, it has been mine to observe 
in but too many victims of early Calvinistic training. 

But it must not be supposed that his education was 
altogether of a religious complexion. At an early age 
he was sent to Llangeltho Grammar School, and sub- 
sequently, when eighteen, he became a student of the 
Highbury Independent College, London, the Calvinistic 
Methodists having then no theological school of their 
own. At both places the instruction was sound so far 
as it went ; and Eichard, as was to be expected from a 
youth of his conscientious disposition, did not fail fully 
to avail himself of his opportunities. At the close of 
his theological curriculum he joined the Independent 
Communion, and became minister of Marlborough 
Chapel, Old Kent Eoad. The congregation was mori- 



120 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

bund ; but the Eev. Henrj^ Ricliard. was equal to the 
occasion. In a short time the attendance greatly in- 
creased, a considerable debt was paid off, schools were 
built, and a literary institute was established. 

It was not long, however, before Mr. Eichard found 
a wider field for his talent, and perhaps a truer vocation. 
In 1843 occurred in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire 
what were known as the ' ' Rebecca Eiots.' ' The Welsh 
roads were then encumbered with turnpike-gates to an 
unendurable extent ; and some of the 3'ounger men 
among the tenant farmers, despairing of relief by more 
legitimate means, had recourse to nocturnal acts of 
demolition. The principality was ovenvhelmed with 
obloquy in consequence ; and but for the courageous 
stand taken by Mr. Richard, who publicl}^ explained the 
origin and narrow limits of the disturbances, there is no 
saying to what foolish acts of repression the Govern- 
ment of the day might not have been induced b^' the 
panic-stricken magistrac}^ to have recourse. But tHe 
matter did not end with the Rebecca Riots. In 1846 a 
government commission was sent into Wales to inquu-e 
into the state of education in the principality. The 
commissioners' report duty appeared in three formidable 
volumes, formidable alike for their contents and size. 
The Welsh were deliberately described as the most 
debased, ignorant, lewd, and vicious people under the 
sun. The misrepresentation, it cannot be doubted, was 
most vile. Something like a wail of anguish broke 
from the heart of the ancient Cymric race. The com- 
missioners had apparently listened to nothing but the 
calumnies poured into their ears by territorial justices 
of the peace and Anglican parsons with empty churches. 

Again Mr. Richard came forward as the champion of 



HENRY RICHARD. 121 

his slandered countrymen ; and in a masterly lecture, 
which he delivered in Crosby Hall in the spring of 1848, 
he vindicated the character of the Welsh people, and 
succeeded in a great measure in rolling back the rising 
tide of English prejudice and calumny. Further, in 
1866, Mr. Eichard contributed to '^ The Morning Star " 
an exhaustive series of letters on the " Social and Po- 
litical Condition of Wales," the value of which Mr. 
Gladstone thus handsomely acknowledged in the speech 
which he delivered as president of the national Eistedd- 
fod, held at Mold in 1873 : "I will frankly own to jon 
that I have shared at a former time, and before I had 
acquainted myself with the subject, the prejudices which 
obtain to some extent with respect to Wales ; and I am 
come here to tell 3^ou how and why I changed my opin- 
ion. It is only fair that I should say that a countryman 
of 3^ours — a most excellent Welshman, Mr. Richard, 
M.P. — did a great deal to open my eyes to the true state 
of the facts by a series of letters which, some years ago, 
he addressed to a morning journal, and subsequent^ 
published in a small volume, which I recommend to all 
persons who may be interested in the subject." 

Not without reason has Mr. Richard been dubbed 
"member for Wales." He incarnates all the best 
characteristics of his race. If he is trusted as a good 
Welshman, he is none the less so as a stanch Noncon- 
formist. Welshmen are born Dissenters, and it is 
natural that they should follow Mr. Richard in such 
matters ; but it is a higher compliment to him to say 
that the confidence of his countrymen is heartil}^ in- 
dorsed by the whole body of English and Scottish 
Nonconformists. There is not a better representative 
Nonconformist in Parliament than the member for 



122 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Merthyr. His opposition to the obnoxious clauses of 
the Education Act of 1870 was as hearty as that of the 
most pronounced " Secularist " in the House, and went || 
a long way to prove that Christianit}^ properly under- 
stood and applied to politics means something far other , 
than priestcraft and obscurantism. The member for I' 
Merth}T spoke with all the more authorit}^, that for 
3^ears he had been one of the most active promoters of 
popular education in Wales. He was one of the first L 
members of the Congregational Board of Education ; ■ 
and, when that bod}^ ultimatel}^ showed too strong a 
partiality for denominational interests, he joined the 
Voluntary School Association, founded on a broader 
and more unsectarian basis ; and during the whole sub- 
sequent period of its useful existence he was its honor- 
ary secretarj", travelling, speaking, and writing on its 
behalf, and taking an active part in the establishment 
and control of its normal schools. 

It is, however, neither as Welshman, Nonconformist, 
nor educationist that Mr. Richard's name is destined 
to go down with honor to remote posterity. It is as 
the strenuous advocate of peace that he will be entitled 
to lasting remembrance. In 1848 he was appointed 
secretary of the Peace Society ; and in 1851 he finally 
abandoned the ministry in order to devote himself soul 
and bod}^ to the good cause. He felt that it was not 
enough to denounce the blood-guiltiness of war. Wars 
are but barbarous methods of settling international dis- 
putes. Let us m-ge on "sovereigns and statesmen," 
he reiisoned, "a better waj', — one at least not a dis- 
grace to civilization and Christianit3^ Let us boldty 
bring forward in the legislature a resolution in favor of 
arbitration as a substitute for the sword.' ' In 1848 Mr. 



HENEY EICHAKD. 123 

Cobden was appealed to, and assented to become the 
standard-bearer of the Peace Society ; and to his intense 
gratification tlie resolution which he moved the following 
session was supported by no fewer than seventy-nine 
votes. 

On the continent, likewise, the work went bravely 
forward. From 1848 to 1852 International Peace 
Congresses, promoted by Mr. Richard and Mr. Elihu 
BuiTitt, were held at Brussels, Paris, Frankfort, Lon- 
don, Manchester, and Edinburgh. The Paris Congress 
was presided over by Victor Hugo, while the London 
Conference was attended by Garrison, Phillips, Lucre- 
tia Mott, and other distinguished Americans. Bright, 
Lamartine, Arago, Humboldt, Liebig, Suringar, Coquer- 
el, Brewster, Cormentin, Girardin, Beckwith, Garnier, 
and many other illustrious persons, were among the 
foremost advocates of the movement. But ' ' Messieurs 
les Assassins ' ' were not prepared to let slip their bloody 
pastime so easily. Louis Napoleon perpetrated his exe- 
crable coup d'etat^ and the war-spirit was again evoked 
with fourfold violence. The Crunean war followed, and 
the exertions of Mr. Richard and the Peace Society 
were perfectly paralyzed. The press ridiculed them : 
they became a byword. 

At the close of the war in 1856, when the plenipoten- 
tiaries were sitting in congress at Paris, negotiating 
terms of peace, it occurred to Mr. Richard and his 
friends that an effort ought to be made to get the prin- 
ciple of arbitration recognized in the treaty. Lord 
Palmerston was seen b}^ an influential 'deputation, but 
held out no hope. Still Mr. Richard persevered. Ko 
one, however, could be induced to accompany him to 
Paris. At last he addressed himself to the guileless 



124 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



1 



Quaker, Joseph Sturge. "Thou art right," was the 
instant reply ; "and, if no one will go with thee, I will." 
They started accordingly, along with Mr. Hindley, the 
member for Ashton, and thek faith was rewarded. 
Lord Clarendon earnestly pleaded their cause with the 
plenipotentiaries, who unanimously declared in favor of 
recourse being had to the good offices of some friendly 
power before any appeal should be made to the arbitra- 
ment of the sword. 

This formal sanction given to the principle of inter- 
national arbitration has not been wholly inoperative. 
In the settlement of the Alabama claims, England and 
America set a memorable example of moderation and 
good sense to the entire family of nations, — an exam- 
ple, alas ! which has since then been but too seldom im- 
itated. For why ? Something more must be done to 
restrain the illimitable horrors of war than to provide a 
feeble substitute for multitudinous homicide after the 
causes have come to a head. The causes must them- 
selves be eliminated. Could arbitration ever restrain a 
Napoleonic coup d'etat, or influence for a moment such 
d3^nastic exigencies and ambitions as brought France 
and German}^ into their last terrible death-grapple? 
The French and German peoples had no quarrel with 
each other. The quarrel was entirel}^ one between their 
rulers, supported by the governing oligarchy of the two 
countries. In the same way the English people have 
had no cause of discontent with the poor Afghans or 
Zulus. 

War is wholly the work — the infamous work — of 
"sovereigns and statesmen." Sovereigns must have 
wars. However peaceful their professions, they have a 
direct and overwhelming interest in the maintenance of 



HENKY KICHARD. 125 

division and discord among nations. Were it not for 
wars, the occupation of kings would be gone, and the 
credit of the kingly form of government would sink to 
zero. In other words, Europe must become a feder- 
ated, self-governing republic, before the world can hope 
to attain to a permanent peace. Until the people are 
sovereign, until the "United States of Europe" have 
been established, "the ogre of war," as Bastiat has 
well said, "will cost as much for his digestion as for 
his meals." Till democracy has in every state put 
down all her enemies under her feet, there cannot, in 
the nature of things, be any genuine disarmament. 

Let Mr. Richard ponder this matter, and prepare to 
deal less gently than he has been in the habit of doing 
with the causes of war, — with the aforesaid sovereigns 
and statesmen. Does he want a text to warrant him in 
seeking to rid the world of these illustrious vultures? 
Here is one that ought to suit him : ' ' Ye know that 
they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles ex- 
ercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise 
authority upon them. But so shall it not be among 
you ; but whosoever will be great among you shall be 
your minister. And whosoever shall be the chiefest 
shall be the servant of all." 

They who exercise lordship over us tell" us of patriot- 
ism. What is patriotism? I have seen some of the 
votaries of the patriotic goddess at their devotions. I 
witnessed the loathsome exploits of the Hyde Park Jin- 
goes, and I saw the Cannon-street Hotel sacked by the 
unconvicted thieves of the Stock Exchange. I have 
had enough of patriotism for a lifetime. I agree with 
Dr. Johnson that ' ' patriotism is the last refuge of the 
scoundrel. " There is but one fatherland, — the world ; 



126 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

and one body of countiymen, — the human race. I 
know of but one patriotism, that of the ancient Ro- 
man, — " Uhi bona ibi patria." Instead of a blessing, 
it is often a misfortune, to have been born in a particular 
locality or country. 

" In what land the sun doth visit, 
We are brisk whate'er betide; 
To give space for wandering is it 
That the world was made so wide." 

Mr. Richard first entered Parliament for Merthyr in 
1868 under the mbst honorable circumstances. Nearly 
the whole of the available suffrages were recorded for 
him, the Hon. Mr. Bruce (now Lord Aberdare) and 
Mr. Fothergill dividing the second votes between them. 
The Welsh landlords never received so sharp a lesson. 
They retaliated by evicting some two hundred of Mr. 
Richard's supporters. He shortly impeached the trans- 
gressors in one of the boldest speeches that had been 
heard at St. Stephen's for a very long time, and his 
fearless exposure of the delinquents had not a little to 
do with the passing of the Ballot Act. 

In 1873 occurred perhaps the greatest triumph of his 
life. He proposed an address to her Majest}^, praying 
that she would instruct the Secretary of State for For- 
eign Affairs ' ' to enter into communication with foreign 
powers with a view to the establishment of a general 
and permanent system of international arbitration." 
Mr. Gladstone opposed the motion ; but the Govern- 
ment was beaten by a majority of ten in a house of 
nearly two hundred members. Addresses of congratu- 
lation poured in on Mr. Richard from all parts of the 
world, — one from Italy being headed by Gen. Gari- 



HENRY RICHARD. 127 

baldi. Charles Sumner wrote from the Senate House 
at Washington, " It marks an epoch in a great cause. 
This speech alone, with the signal result, will make your 
life historic." 

In the following September he visited nearly all the 
capitals and many of the chief cities of the continent. 
Everywhere he was received with open arms, and hailed 
as a sort of " saviour of society." More eloquent 
testimony to the unbearableness of the military yoke, 
beneath which the nations of the continent are groan- 
ing, could not have been. His progress was converted 
by the grateful multitudes into something like a tri- 
umph in honor of the herald of that better time which 
shaU be — 

" When the war-drums throb no longer, 
And the battle-flags are furled, 
In the Parliament of Man, 
The Federation of the World." 



^i 



XI. 

LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY. 

" Can rules or tutors educate 
The democrat whom we await ? " 

IN Mr. Thomas Burt, the member for Morpeth, we 
had an excellent example of what the mine and the 
trades-union can do to form the mind and character of a 
legislator. Similarly, in Mr. Leonard Henry Court- 
ney, member for Liskeard, we have an equally perfect 
sample of what an institution so far removed from the 
mine as the university, working at high pressure, cau 
effect. 

Mr. Courtney has been but a short time in Parlia- 
ment, and I feel that it is consequently somewhat pre- 
mature to take his political horoscope. He, however, 
entered the House so exceptionally well equipped for 
the discharge of his legislative duties, and has on the 
whole executed them so efficiently, that his claims to 
recognition as an eminent Radical cannot be over- 
looked. He is, bej^ond all question, a very able man, 
whatever his critics in or out of the House may say to 
the contrary ; and, among the younger members of the 
Commons, I know no one whose futiu^e conduct will be 
better worth watching. He is one regarding whom it 
may be safely predicted, that, to use a Scotch proverb, 
he will speedily " either make a spoon or spoil a horn." 

128 



LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY. 129 

His detractors say that he has akeady spoiled the horn, 
chiefly by want of tact. 

He is accused of the unpardonable parliamentary 
offence of " lecturing " the House, instead of address- 
ing it ; and it must be admitted that the charge is not 
wholly groundless. Even those who are discerning 
enough to recognize his rare intellectual accomplish- 
ments and powers of close reasoning cannot endure this 
sort of thing. It is in human nature in such circum- 
stances to call out — 

"If thou art great, be merciful, 
O woman of three cows! " 

In the debate on Mr. Trevetyan's motion in favor of 
the county franchise, the member for Liskeard told the 
House, with very little circumlocution, that it had de- 
generated, and that the members generally were no- 
bodies. The inference, of course, was unavoidable 
that the speaker was somebody. Well, I readily admit 
both proposition and deduction, but " hold it not hon- 
esty to have it thus set down." The great majority of 
Mr. Courtney's colleagues, it is true, are mere rule-of- 
thumb legislators, whereas his knowledge of politics is, 
by comparison, scientific. But the uninstructed are 
there to be persuaded, " educated " if j^ou will, by the 
better disciplined intellects ; and there is no surer test 
of genuine culture than the habitual exhibition of a 
tender regard for the feelings of the ignorant. Not 
that Mr. Courtney means it in the least. He is as little 
of a prig as any man I ever met, — a downright hearty 
good fellow, as true as steel to his convictions of what 
is for the public good, and without any fundamental 
egotism of character. In private he has not a particle 



130 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



of the " professor " about him ; and, as this fact comes 
to be commonly recognized, it may be hoped the 
memory of his public forwardness will be effaced, and 
full justice done to his remarkable acquirements and 
good intentions. 

Mr. Courtney, M.P., was born at Penzance in Juty, 
1832. His father, John Sampson Courtney of Alver- 
ton House, was a native of Ilfracombe, where his 
ancestors had been settled for two hundred years at 
least. Courtney, senior, earl}^ in life took to banldng, 
and has for half a century been connected with the fii'm 
of Bolitho, Sons, & Co., bankers, Penzance. 

At an early age young Courtney was sent to the 
Regent House Academy, the chief school in the neigh- 
borhood ; and from the first he displayed conspicuous 
talent. Latterly his studies were superintended by Dr. 
Willan, a private tutor. Then for a short time he was 
employed in the bank of Messrs. Bolitho, Sons, & Co. ; 
but finaU3^, in his nineteenth 3^ear, it was recognized 
that a university career would best suit his strong love 
of study and remarkable powers of application. Ac- 
cordingly, in 1851, he was entered as a student of St. 
John's College, Cambridge ; and in 1855 he graduated 
with honors which speak volumes in themselves. He 
was second wrangler and Smith's prizeman. 

Needless to say, such honorable achievements were 
not long without their reward. He became a fellow of 
his college, and was speedily immersed in lucrative 
private tuition. His preliminary training had not been 
specially adapted to secure him such distinctions, and 
it is, therefore, impossible to withhold our admiration 
for the vigor of mind and body which enabled him to 
triumph so signally. 



LEONAED HENEY COUETNEY. 131 

How far marked aptitude for mathematical studies is 
indicative of general intellectual superiority has been 
the subject of much controversy. Lord Macaulay kept 
an exhaustive catalogue of senior wranglers who always 
remained juniors in every thing but mathematics, and 
Sir William Hamilton estimated the disciplinary value 
of the study at a very low rate. The truth, however, 
seems to be that the gift or knack which enables one 
man to manipulate algebraic quantities so much more 
readily than another may or may not co-exist in the 
mind with other, it may be, greater endowments. One 
thing only is very certain, — the process of intense ratio- 
cinative specialization, to which wranglers must neces- 
sarily subject themselves, cannot fail to seriously dwarf 
their other faculties. Off their special tox)ics the writ- 
ings of great mathematicians have nearly always struck 
me as peculiarly bloodless and uninteresting, and it is 
no small praise to Mr. Courtney to say that he is an 
exception to this rule. In point of both reasoning and 
style, his contributions to " The Fortnightly," for ex- 
ample, and his reported speeches, bear but few traces 
of the depletory process to which I have alluded. This 
exemption may, to some extent, be accounted for by 
the fact, that, on completing his university curriculum, 
he broke vigorously into intellectual fields and pastures 
new. 

In 1858 he was called to the bar by the Honorable 
Society of Lincoln's Inn ; and in 1872 he became pro- 
fessor of political economy at University College, a 
post which he retained for nearly three years. During 
that time he acquainted himself with all the best writers 
on the subject, and became a warm advocate of the 
special views of John Stuart Mill. From Mill it is 



132 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

easy to see that he derived a great deal more than from 
the Alma Mater of which he is a senior fellow. With 
respect to the representation of minorities, and the 
female franchise more particularly, the mantle of the 
deceased philosopher has fallen on his shoulders. Mill 
was Ubver at a university ; yet it has been his part to 
fructify the intellects of such distinguished university 
alumni as Courtne}^ and Fawcett. Without his influ- 
ence there is no saying what they might not have been. 
Oxford and Cambridge are in reality huge forcing- 
houses for the production of young aristocrats, main- 
tained at scandalous cost, in no sense national institu- 
tions, and about the last places in the world where one 
would dream of going in order to acquire the art of 
thinking. Such exceptionally intelligent and public- 
spirited emanations as the members for Hackney and 
Liskeard are in reality rather a misfortune than other- 
wise. Theu^ " fellowship " is a snare. 

''The name of Cassius honors this corruption, 
And Chastisement doth therefore hide his head." 

It is hardly too much to say, that if Oxford and Cam- 
bridge were erased from the map of England to-mor- 
row, and the intellect of the country permitted to flow 
into freer channels, the political and general intelli- 
gence of the people would be elevated by the change 
many degrees. 

Besides discharging the duties of the political econ- 
om}^ chair at Universit}' College, Mr. Courtney has held 
several other appointments, which have necessarily ex- 
tended the range of his intellectual vision. He has 
been an examiner in literature and history for the 
Indian Civil Service, and examiner in the constitution- 



LEONARD HENEY COURTNEY. 133 

al history of England for the University of London. 
Since 1864 he has, moreover, been a " Times " leadei*- 
writer, with all that that implies. 

When he left his seat in the gallery to take his seat 
on the opposition benches, he entered the actual arena 
of politics armed, so to speak, cap-a-pie. In addition, 
he had travelled much, and examined on the spot the 
working of the political machinery of many lands. He 
had visited nearly every European country, the United 
States twice, as well as Canada, India, Turkey, and 
Eg3,T)t. 

His first attempt to force the gates of St. Stephen's 
was made at the general election of 1874, when he 
boldly threw down the gauntlet to that clever but un- 
stable politician, the late Right Honorable Edward 
Horsman. Mr. Horsman won by the narrow majority 
of five votes. A somewhat acrimonious war of words 
followed, wherein Mr. Courtney had not the worst of 
it. 

Towards the close of 1876 Mr. Horsman died ; and 
Mr. Courtney and Lieut. -Col. Sterling entered the field, 
the former polling 388, and the latter 281 votes. Mr. 
Courtney's poll was the largest ever recorded for a 
candidate at Liskeard, and, coming as it did when 
Liberal fortunes were very low, did a good deal to 
re-invigorate the party in Parliament. 

It remains to consider, however inadequately, a few 
of the more prominent questions with which Mr. Court- 
ney has identified himself. He is now the chief advo- 
cate in Parliament of the representation of minorities 
and of women, or, to be more gallant, of women and 
minorities. Now, with regard to the question of mi- 
nority representation, much may be said pro and con. 



134 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Mill undoubtedly regarded Mr. Hare's scheme of 
' ' proportional representation " as a political discovery 
of the most important character, and any such opinion 
of Mill's is of course entitled to respectful considera- 
tion. But Mr. Courtney is so enamoured of "three- 
cornered constituencies ' ' and ' ' cumulative votes ' ' that 
he positive!}^ refused to support Mr. Trevelyan's County 
Franchise Bill because it contained no provision for 
the realization of a " principle which would re-create 
political life, raising it out of the degradation which 
overlaid it." Mr. Courtne}'- tells us we are about to be 
overwhelmed by the billows of a tempestuous demo- 
cratic ocean abounding in unknown terrors. There is 
but one escape : we must all put out to sea in tiny 
"three-cornered" boats, on pain of universal political 
shipwreck. Was there ever so great faith seen in or 
out of Israel ? One recalls the exclamation of the Bre- 
ton mariner, — "How great, O Lord, is thy ocean! 
and how small is my skiff ! ' ' Trtie danger to be appre- 
hended is no less than the gradual extinction of the 
' ' independent member. ' ' 

Now, apart from the fact that the independent mem- 
ber is generally a member who is not to be depended 
on, is it a fact that our experience of the actual work- 
ing of the ' ' cumulative vote ' ' and of the ' ' three- 
cornered constituency" has been so encouraging as to 
induce us to withhold the franchise from the county 
householder untU the requisite number of ' ' corners ' ' 
and "cumulations" can be created? I chance to 
know the electoral cu'cumstances, parliamentary and 
scholastic, of two important cities in the north, — the 
one retm-ning three members to Parliament by the 
three-cornered artifice ; the other, thirteen members to 



LEONARD HENEY COURTNEY. 135 

the school board by the cumulative process. In the 
former case the Tories, at the general election of 1874, 
managed to return their candidate, simply because no 
human ingenuity could, with the secrecy of the ballot- 
box to contend against, so evenly apportion the two 
votes of each Liberal elector among the three Liberal 
candidates as to keep the Conservative at the bottom 
of the poll. With an open vote, it was quite possible, 
though unnecessaril}^ difficult ; but under the ballot it 
was a preposterous game of blind man's buff, — the 
veriest ne plus ultra of legislative folly. The minority 
succeeded with a vengeance. 

In the other case three school-board elections have 
taken place. On the first occasion the Radical 
(" Secularist ") minority put up too many candidates, 
and returned none ; next election they carried two, 
who found themselves powerless to influence the decis- 
ions of the ultra-orthodox majority. These two stood 
again, but as acquiescing in the ecclesiastico-educa- 
tional policy favored by the mass of the electors, and 
lost their seats, as they deserved to do. An intelli- 
gent and active minority with a just cause was thus 
effaced. It would be very unsafe to found any argu- 
ment on such slender data ; but it is quite possible that 
the ultimate effect of minority representation, at all 
events in its present shape, may be found to have the 
very opposite effect of what Mr. CoiuTtney anticipates. 
Its tendency appears to be to confirm majorities in 
erroneous opinions, while hopelessly discouraging right- 
thinking minorities from further propaganda. When 
once we have obtained something like true electoral 
majorities, it will be time enough to provide for the 
representation of minorities. 



136 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

At the election of 18G8, Lancashire, as Mr. Court- 
ney has pointed out, with its included towns, returned 
twentj^-two Conservative to eleven Liberal representa- 
tives ; 3'et the Liberal vote was one hundred and four 
thousand strong, while the Conservative was only one 
hundred and two thousand. Suppose the distinction 
of town and count}^ were abolished once and for all, 
and each shire or aggregate of shires were permitted to 
vote for a group of candidates in proportion to its elec- 
torate, on something like the old French S3"'stem of 
scrutin de liste, would not that give a fairer chance to 
' ' independent members ' ' and candidates ' ' above me- 
diocrity ' ' than thoroughly artificial corners and cumu- 
lations ? Let Mt. Courtney consider the matter ; for 
certainly the minority-representation craze has landed 
him in strange seeming contradictions. 

On the one da3' he opposed the enfranchisement of 
the county householder, and on the next he proposed 
to remove the electoral disabilities of women, tie 
would plead, doubtless, by waj^ of extenuation, that 
this was not a lowering, but an assimilation, of the fran- 
chise, and that he was not consequently compelled by 
consistency to encumber his bill with any three-cornered 
contrivances. But the point is all too fine ; and the 
House showed its sense of the incongruity of the situa- 
tion b}^ recording a majority of a hundred and fourteen 
votes against the measure, as compared with eight}'" 
the 3'ear before, and this notwithstanding the fact that 
the member for Liskeard' s arguments were most cogent. 
It is hardly necessarj^ to observe, that, like all ardent 
advocates of female rights, Mr. Courtney is a bachelor. 

But there is one question with respect to which the 
most captious Radical can have nothing but words of 



LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY. 137 

praise to bestow on Mr. Courtney. Since he first 
entered Parliament he has never ceased, in season and 
out of season, to oppose witli rare foresight the disas- 
trous policy of which the upshot has been the serious 
and discreditable war with the Zulus. His fidelity in 
this matter ought never to be forgotten. 

On the 7th of August, 1877, he moved the following 
resolution with respect to the annexation of the Trans- 
vaal : " That, in the opinion of this House, the annexa- 
tion of the South-African Eepublic is unjustifiable, and 
calculated to be injurious to the interests of the United 
Kingdom and of its colonies in South Africa." " We 
had formerl}^ agreed," he said, " not to carrj^ our arms 
into the middle of Africa, and to allow the Dutch Boers 
themselves to go into the interior. We had reversed 
that policj^ We had taken on ourselves the immense 
burden of administering the affairs of the Transvaal. 
We had made ourselves responsible for what that re- 
public had done, and would have to take up its quarrels 
with the native chiefs. The cost would not be borne 
b}^ the colonies, and would have to be borne by us at 
home. The vote of to-night was the first symptom of 
the considerable expenditure which the country would 
have to bear for many years in connection with this 
matter." 

Most true! "The pity is 'tis true." I reproduce 
these words from Hansard, because they are an imper- 
ishable monument of Mr. Courtnej^'s sagacity as a 
counsellor of the nation in the conduct of difficult 
affairs. He demonstrated that Sir Theophilus Shepstonc 
had, with a high hand, violated both the conditions b}^ 
which the Colonial Office sought to bind him in his deal- 
ings with the Transvaal. He had issued his annexa- 



138 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



1 



tionist proclamation without the sanction of the High 
Commissioner, and against the wishes of the Boers, who 
publicly protested against the outrage in the proportion 
of twelve to one. The subjugation of the Transvaal 
was perhaps the most treacherous act, the basest mani- 
festation of our ' ' spirited foreign polic}^ ; ' ' and yet, 
alas ! Lord Sandon, in the debate on Sir Charles Dilke's 
memorable resolution, was able to say with truth, " The 
honorable member for Liskeard has a right to raise the 
question of the Transvaal ; but most of those opposite 
can scarcely do so with good grace. The annexation 
of the Transvaal was accepted generally by the two 
great political parties in the House." 

Having done our best to restore the emancipated 
Koumelians to the hateful yoke of the Sultan, it was 
perhaps fitting that we should seek to subject these 
brave Dutch republicans to that of the Empress of 
India. O tempora, mores! I congratulate the mem- 
ber for Liskeard that in this infamous transaction his 
hands at least ai'e clean. 



XII. 

ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 

" O heavens ! what some men do 
While some men leave to do ! " 

THERE is no better example in Parliament of what 
is called a " self-made man " than Anthony John 
Mundella, the irrepressible representative of Sheffield 
Radicalism. 

An apologist of the late Andrew Johnson, President 
of the United States, once urged, in the hearing of 
Thaddeus Stevens, that " Andy " was at least a " self- 
made man.' ' The retort of that bitterest of politicians 
was crushing : "I am glad to hear it ; it relieves Prov- 
idence of a heavy responsibility." Now, one has at 
first a little of this sort of feeling with respect to Mr. 
Mundella. The edifice which the self-made man erects 
is apt to appear so much more elegant to the architect 
than to the public. Besides, the honorable member for 
Sheffield is a cmious combination. His coat is one of 
many colors. He is half Italian, half English. He 
has been everything, from a "printer's devil" to a 
" captain of industry," and each avocation has left 
some traces of its influence on his character and sym- 
pathies. He is half workman, half employer. He is a 
churchman, and a warm advocate of religious equality ; 
a Radical, and a supporter of the royal grants. He is 

139 



140 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

a living illustration of the truth of a profound saying 
in Ecclesiasticus, " All things are double." Add to 
this that his energy is irrepressible ; that he is not 
afflicted, to put it mildly, with mock modesty ; that he 
represents, on pure principles, a constituency which is 
pre-eminently the most rascally in England ; that he is, 
withal, fundamentally an able and honest politician, 
justly regarded b}^ ihe working-class as one of its great- 
est benefactors, and it will readily be admitted that 
first impressions of such a man are apt to be erroneous. 

Among so many seeming contradictions it is difficult 
to find the reconciling principle or central fact ; but, lOve 
all other men and politicians, Mr. Mundella ma}^ be 
known by the surest of all tests, — by his " fruits." I 
shall merely premise, before recounting the leading 
facts of his career, that it would have, perhaps, been 
better to classify the member for Sheffield as an emi- 
nent Democrat rather than as an eminent Radical. He 
is emphatically a man of the people, rightly or wrongly 
feeling as they feel, thinking as they think ; and I 
doubt if there be in England, excepting Mr. Brad- 
laugh, a more effective out-of-door speaker, a more 
powerful haranguer of mass meetings. He is at 
home in a multitude, however vast or however rude. 
He is one of the very few members of the House of 
Commons who can beat down a refractor}^ public meet- 
ing by unflinching resolution and sheer strength of lung. 
In the town of Broadhead such a qualification is simply 
invaluable ; and, but for the unsparing exercise of it at 
the elections of 1874 and 1880, the Liberalism of Shef- 
field would have showed but poorly indeed. 

Anthony John Mundella, M.P., was born at Leices- 
ter in March, 1825, the eldest son in a family of five. 



ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 141 

Mundella, senior, was a Lombard refugee, a native of 
Como, who, taking part in the insurrectionary move- 
ment against the Austrians in 1820, was driven into 
exile. He landed in England almost penniless, and 
settled eventually in Leicester, where he endeavored to 
earn a livelihood as a teacher of languages. Instruc- 
tion in modern tongues was then a luxury in which but 
few indulged, and the luckless Antonio, in consequence, 
frequently broke the exile's bitter bread, — endured 
what his immortal countryman Dante has called ' ' the 
hell of exile." Educated for the Roman Church, he 
had no regular profession on which to rely. His in- 
come was consequently at all times precarious. He 
married, however, a remarkable woman, — Rebecca 
Allsop of Leicester, a lady richh^ endowed mentally, 
and possessed of some little property. She was an 
adept in lace-embroidery, then a remunerative art, and 
her skill and unremitting industry in the main support- 
ed the Mundella household for the first ten years of her 
married life. 

Then there came a crisis. Her eyesight almost com- 
pletely failed ; and Anthony had in consequence to be 
removed from school in his ninth year, in order to put 
his childish shoulder to the wheel. So far his educa- 
tion had been carefully superintended. Mrs. Mundella 
had a wide knowledge of English literature, was a dili- 
gent Shakespearian scholar, and little Anthony had 
been as quick to learn as she had been apt to teach. 

His acquirements accordingly secured him employ- 
ment in a printing-office, where he remained till his 
eleventh year. Thereupon he was apprenticed to the 
hosiery trade. He was most fortunate in his employer, 
a discriminating man, whose son, a member of Parlia- 



142 EMINENT LIBERALS IK PARLIAMENT. 

ment, was the first to welcome Mr. Mundella to St 
Stephen's on his return for Sheffield in 1868. In his 
eighteenth year his apprenticeship was at an end. 
He had mastered his trade thoroughly, and contempo- 
raneously he had learned all that could be acquired at 
the Mechanics' Institute of the town, and a great deal 
more. He was an indefatigable reader. In his nine- 
teenth year, so conspicuous was his business capacit}', 
that he was engaged as manager of a large enterprise 
in the cotton trade. At twenty-three he removed to 
Nottingham, to become junior partner in a firm which 
shortly transacted the largest hosiery business in the 
Midlands, — Hone, Mundella, & Co., — emplo^dng as 
many as three thousand " hands." Of this flourishing 
companj^ Mr. Mundella is still a director, though not 
interfering very actively with the management. He is, 
moreover, chairman of the Connnercial Union Insur- 
ance Company, and is a director of the National Bank 
and of the Bank of New Zealand. 

To very few " printers' devils" or " stockingers " is 
it given thus to have a finger in the grande commerce 
of the country'- ; but Mr. Mundella climbed the ladder 
steadily and skilfully, and it cannot be said of him that 
when he got to the summit he forgot the condition of 
the less fortunate toilers whom he left below. On the 
contrary, no working-man in England has striven more 
earnestly or intelligently for the elevation of the mass 
than the member from Sheffield, as a bare enumeration 
of his political and legislative res gestce will readily 
show. 

Always precocious, MundeUa's political career began 
in mere bo3'hood. The Austrian t3'rann5^, which had 
driven his father from his native land, and the miserable 



ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 143 

condition of the ' ' stockingers ' ' among whom his lot 
was cast, naturallj^ disposed him to become a partisan 
of the " Charter," which was at that time being ear- 
nestly advocated in Leicester by the well-known Thom- 
as Cooper, author of the "Purgatory of Suicides," a 
work written in Leicester Jail. Cooper, in his inter- 
esting "Autobiography," published in 1872, gives us a 
vivid glimpse of the adolescent representative of Shef- 
field : "I had been appealing strongly one evening 
to the patriotic feelings of young Englishmen, mention- 
ing the names of Hampden, Sydney, and Marvell, and 
eulogizing the grand spuit of disinterestedness and self- 
sacrifice which characterized so many of our brave fore- 
runners, when a handsome young man sprang upon our 
little platform, and declared himself on the people's 
side, and desired to be enrolled as a Chartist. He did 
not belong to the poorest ranks ; and it was the con- 
sciousness that he was acting in the spirit of self-sacri- 
fice, as well as his fervid eloquence, that caused a 
thrilling cheer from the ranks of the working-men. 
He could not have been more than fifteen at the time. 
He passed away from us too soon, and I have never 
seen him but once all these years. But the men of 
Sheffield have signalized their confidence in his patriot- 
ism by returning him to the House of Commons ; and 
all England knows, if there be a man of energy, as well 
as uprightness, in that House, it is Anthony John Mun- 
deUa." 

This picture is obviously somewhat overdrawn ; but 
in the main it is doubtless correct. At Leicester, from 
1840 to 1848, Mr. Mundella agitated by voice and pen 
for the " Charter," and had the satisfaction of hearing 
reform ballads of his own composition sung in the 
streets. 



144 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 



When he removed to Nottingham in 1848, new public 
duties awaited him. He was made successively town 
councillor, sheriff, alderman, justice of the peace, and 
president of the Chamber of Commerce. These local 
experiences were, of course, valuable to him as a legis- 
lator and minister in posse ; but it was in another and 
more original field that he first did signal, and, I might 
say, inestimable, service to the entire community. He 
was the author in 1860, as he was the president for 
eleven years subsequent^, of the Nottingham Board of 
Arbitration and Conciliation for the Hosier}^ Trade, — 
the harbinger of so many others. Wearied with inces- 
sant "strikes" and "lock-outs," Mr. Mundella, after 
many weeks of fruitless negotiation, at last got employ- 
ers and employed together. After three daj^s' discus- 
sion, the then existing strike was closed by mutual 
concession, and a resolution agreed to, that, in future, 
all questions aflfecting wages should be authoritatively 
settled by a board consisting of nine duly elected 
representatives of the masters, and nine of the men. 
The board held its first meeting on the 3d of December, 
1860. In an article on " Conciliation and Arbitration " 
in " The Contemporary Review " for 1870, ten j^ears 
later, Mr. Mundella thus sums up the results of the 
experiment: "Since the 27th of September, 1860, 
there has not been a bill of any kind issued. Stril?:es are 
at an end also. Levies to sustain them are unknown ; 
and one shilling a year from each member suffices to 
pay all expenses. This — not a farthing of which comes 
out of the pockets of their masters — is equivalent to a 
large advance of wages. I have inspected the balance- 
sheet of a trades-union of ten thousand three hundred 
men, and I found the expenditure for thhteen months 
to amount to less than a hundi-ed iDounds." 



1 



ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 145 

No sooner was the Nottingham method of settling 
trade disputes by arbitration recognized as feasible, 
than Mr. Mundella, as its author, was invited by many 
towns, and, among others, by Sheffield, to give popular 
expositions of his system. Sheffield had suffered man}^ 
things at the hands of Broadhead and his infamous 
crew ; and so pleased was the cream of the working- 
men with the prospect of escape from the vicious circle 
in which they were involved, that, in 1868, they invited 
the chairman of the Nottingham board to come forward 
as their candidate. He was returned at the head of 
the poll, notwithstanding the strenuous support given 
to Roebuck by the assassin Broadhead at trades-union 
meetings. 

On entering Parliament, the honor of seconding the 
address was conferred on him by Mr. Gladstone. 
Since then his efforts to benefit the working-class have 
been unflagging, and, on the whole, most successful. 
His speech on the second reading of the Education 
Bill was pronounced by Mr. Gladstone to be the most 
important delivered on the occasion. He had exam- 
ined into the educational systems of America, Germany, 
Switzerland, and Holland, on the spot, and was there- 
fore in a position to speak with authority on the all- 
important theme. 

His persistent efforts to repeal the Criminal Law 
Amendment Act, that the equality of workmen before 
the law might be established, and to pass the Factory 
Nine Hours Bill, in order that the hours of labor might 
be shortened to hapless women and children, have been 
rewarded. The late Tory Government itself did what 
it would not permit him to do. All the same, the 
credit must be accorded to Mr. Mundella, whose views 



146 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

on labor and factory legislation were at the general 
election of 1874 made test questions all over the north 
of England. 

In 1878 he succeeded in carr3dng a useful bill for the 
preservation of fresh-water fisheries, so as to increase 
the supply of food and give harmless sport to the 
poorer class of anglers. In the- subsequent session his 
bill to abolish property qualifications in connection with 
all local government and municipal bodies was lost by 
onl}^ six votes. 

To some, such legislative achievements may appear 
small and commonplace ; but it should be recollected 
that in legislation, as in other matters, it is " the mean 
and common, the things of the eternal j^esterday," that 
it is most desu'able and least agreeable to tackle. 

I have said that Mr. Mundella is a Democrat rather 
than a Radical, and I shall finall}^ give an illustration 
of what I mean. On the vote to pa}^ the cost of the 
Prince of Wales' mischievous jaunt to India, he sided 
with the majorit}^ in favor of the royal subsid3^ and he 
had the temerity to assign his reasons for so doing : 
"As long as we had a monarch}^, we should be 
ashamed to have a cotton-velvet or tinfoil sort of 
monarchy. He did not believe in a cheap, shabby, 
brummagem monarchy ; and he always would give his 
vote loj'ally and in consistency with those opinions, 
which he believed to be the opinions of his constitu- 
ents." 

Now, it is impossible to say whether the Radicalism or 
the logic of this sentence is the worse ; jet, I suppose, 
it must be admitted that such clap-trap is regarded 
by the demos of Sheffield — to use the language of 
our late democratic-imperialist Premier — as " the voice 



ANTHONY JOHN MUNDELLA. 147 

of sense and truth." In the first place, apart from the 
fact that an advanced Radical might reasonably be 
expected to be ashamed of having a monarchy of any 
kind, cheap or dear, Mr. Mundella knew, as every 
other member knew, that the reasons set forth for the 
prince's trip were not the true reasons. In the second 
place, as a friend of the people, and knowing, as he so 
weir knows, the sore privations of the masses, how 
could he, with a clear conscience, hint that a royal 
family, which directly costs the nation five million dol- 
lars per annum, is either cheap or shabby? The presi- 
dency of the United States costs fifty thousand dollars 
a 3^ear ; and no impartial observer has ever yet affirmed 
that the simple courtesies and hospitalities of the White 
House compare unfavorably with the ridiculous tom- 
fooleries of the Court of St. James. In the thn-d 
place, it is not the part of a good Radical, as Mr. 
Mundella seems to think, implicitly to follow the multi- 
tude, even if the multitude consist of one's constitu- 
ents. There is a following of the multitude to do evil 
which the true Radical will resist, when necessary, at 
all hazards, in the interest of the people themselves. 
When great principles are at stake, the genuine Radical 
must ever be ready to go out into the wilderness, if 
need be, alone. 

" Far in front the Cross stands ready, 
And the crackling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday 
In silent awe return 

To glean up the scattered ashes 
Into History's sacred urn." 

Mr. Mundella has likewise a curious disposition to 
adorn his conversation with quite unnecessary allusions 



148 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

to the opinions of " lords " and other great people of 
his acquaintance, who are intellectually greatly his 
inferiors. In aristocracy-ridden England this is nearly 
always a marked trait of the self-made man. The fact 
is, the honorable member for Sheffield, with all his 
vigor of intellect and many virtues, has not altogether 
escaped the "society" contagion of which the court 
is the centre, which has made so m&nj strong men 
weak, and caused "the currents of so many enter- 
prises of pith and moment to turn aside and lose the 
name of action." 

" O thou that sea-walls sever 

From lands un walled by seas ! 
Wilt thou endure forever, 

O Milton's England, these? 
Thou that wast his republic, 

Wilt thou clasp their knees ? — 
Those royalties rust-eaten, 

Those worm-corroded lies 
That keep thy head storm-beaten 

And sunlike strength of eyes 
From the open air and heaven 

Of intercepted skies." 



XIII. 

CHARLES BKADLAUGH. 

" There is heresy here, you perceive: for the right 
Of privately judging means simply that light 
Has been granted to me for deciding on you ; 
And in happier times, before atheism grew^, 
The deed contained clauses for cooking you too." 

I HAVE been warned by kind friends who have been 
pleased to commend several of the foregoing 
sketches much beyond their deserts, — friends whose 
good opinion I highly value, — that, whatever I do, I 
must on no account allow ' ' Bradlaugh ' ' to appear in 
this series. To very many " Iconoclast" is still mon- 
strum Jiorrendum cui lumen ademptum. But my reply 
has invariably been. How are you to keep him out? 
The man is altogether too big to be passed over, if one 
is not to lose sight of every thing savoring of reasona- 
ble proportion. Besides, though due regard must be 
had to the " single life," it is of yet greater importance 
to consider the " tj^pe ; " and a more marked type of 
Radicalism than that which is incarnated in Mr. Charles 
Bradlaugh does not exist. He is the grim captain of 
that section of English Radicals, far more powerful 
than is generally supposed, who boldly inscribe on their 
banner the watchwords, Atheism, Malthusianism, Re- 
publicanism. These formidable isms^ which philoso- 

149 



150 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

phers have excogitated in the closet or whispered in 
the salo7i, Mr. Bradlaugh has with stentorian voice 
proclauned from the housetop. It is not that his opin- 
ions differ so much from those entertained by many 
most respectable and intelligent members of ' ' society : ' ' 
his offence consists in having conveyed the news to the 
" man in the street." He has insisted on popularizing 
doctrines which ' ' vested interests ' ' desire to see im- 
parted only to a select body of initiated. 

In all such matters, however, there is really but one 
question to be asked : Has the propagandist acted in 
good faith ? has he been true to his own convictions ? 
Now, Mr. Bradlaugh is a very big man, as well in mind 
as in body, and large objects ought never to be inspected 
with a microscope. He has been the hero of a hundred 
fights, and it may well be that he has not on all occa- 
sions conducted himself with the perfect chivalry of a 
knight of romance. Still, taking him all in all, and 
having due consideration for the many hardships and 
temptations of a career such as his, I cannot doubt that 
he has been valiant — singularly valiant — for the truth 
as he has known it, and that he will be justly regarded 
by posterity as one of the most remarkable figures of 
his time and country. His anti-religious ideas are in 
the main repugnant to me, as I dare say they are to 
most of my readers ; but let us not judge Mr. Brad- 
laugh or any other public -spirited citizen by our par- 
ticular standard of spiritual rectitude. "Those who 
have not the law are a law unto themselves, their con- 
science accusing or excusing one another." To his 
own Master, to the light which lighteth every man who 
Cometh into this world, Mr. Bradlaugh must stand or 
fall. Judge not that 3 e be not judged. Rather let us 



CHAELES BRADLAUGH. 151 

say, as did Oliver Cromwell in a somewhat similar case, 
" Sir, the state, in choosing men to serve it, takes no 
notice of their opinions : if the}^ be willing faithfully to 
serve it, that satisfies. I advised j^ou formerly to bear 
with men of different minds- from yourself. . . . Take 
heed of being too sharp or too easily sharpened by 
others against those to whom 3^ou can object little, but 
that they square not with you in every opinion concern- 
ing matters of religion." 

It is a work of some difficulty to summarize the 
checkered career of Mr. Bradlaugh. He himself has 
attempted it with indifferent success in a brief ' ' Auto- 
biography," clear enough so far as the narrative of 
events is concerned, but lacking somewhat in human 
interest. 

He was born at Hoxton in 1833. His father was a 
struggling, indefatigable solicitor's clerk, who could 
but ill afford to give his son Charles the scanty educa- 
tion which he actuall}^ received. At seven years of age 
he attended a national school in Abbey Street, Bethnal 
Green. Subsequently he was sent to a small private 
school in the same quarter, and in his eleventh 3'ear he 
completed his meagre educational curriculum at a boys' 
school in Hackney Road, having acquired little be^^ond 
a knowledge of the three R's. He is, consequently, 
for the most part a self-taught man ; but he has taught 
himself to some pmpose. His mind is in a splendid 
state of disciphne. You can account for the fact when 
you see his library, which is as extensive as it is curi- 
ous, — the well-worn accumulations of a life devoted to 
stormy controversy abroad and intense study at home. 
I never remember to have seen such a serviceable col- 
lection of argumentative shot and shell as on Mr. Brad- 
laugh's shelves. 



152 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Bradlaugh was first employed as errand-boy to 
the firm which his father served. In his fourteenth 
year he was equal to the more important duty of acting 
as wharf-clerk and cashier to a firm of coal-merchants 
in Britannia Fields, City Eoad. While so engaged, the 
serious troubles of his life began. In his sixteenth 
year he was a model young Christian, an enthusiastic 
Sundaj^-school teacher, — altogether a promising neo- 
phyte of the Church as by law established. But he 
had not, like Mr. Spurgeon, attained to that chronic 
state of conversion, that sublime superiority to reason, 
which should enable him to dote with unutterable joy 
on such empty words as "Look, look, look! " The 
Bishop of London was announced to hold a confirma- 
tion in Bethnal Green ; and the incumbent of St. Peter's, 
Hackney Eoad, in an evil hour, requested his youthful 
Sundaj^-school teacher to be prepared with suitable an- 
swers to any questions that might be put by the Right 
Reverend Father in God aflecting the Thirty-Nine 
Articles and cognate matters. Lil^e an obedient son 
of the Church, young Bradlaugh complied, and began 
to compare the Articles with the Gospels ; but finding, 
as well he might, that they difl'ered, he wrote a respect- 
ful note to his clergyman, asking to be piloted through 
one or two of his difficulties. The ill-advised incum- 
bent replied by informing the lad's parents that their 
son had turned atheist, and that he had been sus- 
pended from his functions as a Sunday-school teacher 
for a period of three months. It is not given to the 
clerical profession, as a rule, to know much about 
human nature ; but this was an exceptional blunder. I 
do not know that Mr. Bradlaugh is constitutionally 
a doubter, — indeed, I think not; but he is a born 



CHARLES BRADLAXJGH. 153 

fighter, a dialectical athlete revelling in the gaudium 
certaminis as a strong man rejoices to run a race. 
The young tiger had tasted blood. He refused to 
attend church during the interval of his suspension as 
a teacher, and soon began to spend his Sundays else- 
where and otherwise. The time (1849) was one of 
great religious and political ferment ; and Bonner's 
Fields, near where the Consumption Hospital now 
stands, was the habitual resort of disputants of all 
kinds. Thither Bradlaugh repaired to mingle with 
3^outhful ardor in the fray, — at first on the orthodox 
Christian side, then as a deist, and ultimately as a full- 
fledged atheist or ne plus ultra infidel. How great a 
spark the rash, intolerant incumbent of St. Peter's had 
kindled ! Mr. Bradlaugh's next step on the downward 
path was to become a teetotaller, and this brought 
matters to a crisis. At the instance of the reverend 
gentleman, Mr. Bradlaugh's emplo^^ers gave him "three 
daj^s to change his opinions, or lose his situation." He 
might have swallowed one at a time ; but ' ' beer and 
the Bible " made his gorge rise. 

Rather than succumb, the poor boy elected to go out 
from his father's house a social outcast, and throw him- 
self on the stony-hearted world. Whether pride or 
principle had most to do with this hegira, it might be 
hard to say ; but, in any case, the die was irrevocably 
cast. He soon became known as a boy-preacher of the 
most audacious infidelity ; but it did not pay. Unlike 
Spurgeon's godliness, Bradlaugh's ungodliness was by no 
means " great gain." In his seventeenth year he found 
himself reduced to such straits that he was compelled 
to enlist in the Seventh Dragoon Guards ; and with 
this regiment he served for three years in Ireland, and 



154 EMINENT LIBEEALS IN PAKLIAMENT. 

there he did not neglect his opportunities. He studied 
the grievances of the Irish people on the spot, and 
hence his never-failing sympathy with that much- 
enduring race. By his hand was drawn up the famous 
manifesto of the Irish Republic which ushered in the 
Fenian agitation. In 1853, through the death of an 
aunt, he inherited a small sum of money, out of which 
he purchased his discharge, and returned to London, 
quitting the regiment with a ' ' very good character ' ' 
from his colonel, who all along treated him with marked 
consideration. He was soon lucky enough to find 
emplo\^ment in the chambers of a solicitor named 
Eogers, a liberal-minded man, who was proof against 
all the shafts of anonymous bigotry which were 
showered on him as the harborer of Iconoclast. In 
this oflice Mr. Bradlaugh acquired a knowledge of legal 
principles and procedure of which the most eminent 
counsel at the English bar might well be proud. He 
again began to lecture in various metropolitan free- 
thought institutions, more particularly the Hall of 
Science, City Road, of which my friend, Mr. Evetyn 
Jeri'old, has recently given an account so just and 
graphic. 

In 1855 Mr. Bradlaugh had his first encounter with 
the police authorities in regard to the right of public 
meeting in Hyde Park. He carried his point, and was 
publicly thanked by the Royal Commission of Inquiry 
for the value of the evidence given by him on the 
occasion. In 1858 Mr. Edward Truelove, the weU- 
known and personally estimable free-thought publisher, 
was arrested for issuing the pamphlet, " Is T^^'annicide 
Justifiable ? ' ' while Simon Bernard was at the same 
time incarcerated, at the instance of the French Gov- 



CHARLES BEADLAUGH. 155 

ernment, for alleged complicity in the Orsini con- 
spiracy. In the defence of both Mr. Bradlaugh ren- 
dered material assistance. 

" In October, 1860," said Mr. Bradlaugh in his "Au- 
tobiography," "I paid my first visit to Wigan, and 
certainly lectured there under considerable difficulty, 
the resident clergy actually inciting the populace to 
physical violence and part destruction of the building I 
lectured in. I, however, supported by a courageous 
woman and her husband, persevered, and, despite 
bricks and kicks, visited Wigan again and again until 
I had, hon gre^ mal gre^ improved the manners and 
customs of the people, so that I am now a welcome 
speaker there. I could not," he naively adds, "im- 
prove the morals of the clergy, as the public journals 
have recently shown ; but that was their misfortune, 
not my fault." 

In 1861 Mt. Bradlaugh was arrested at the instance 
of the Young Men's Christian Association of Plymouth ; 
but he succeeded, thanks to his forensic skill, in wring- 
ing from an unwilling bench of magistrates a prompt 
certificate of dismissal. Mr. Bradlaugh then, in turn, 
raised proceedings against the Plymouth superintend- 
ent of police for illegal arrest. The verdict, one far- 
thing damages, though unsatisfactory in the main, had 
yet two important results : it made the Plymouth au- 
thorities pay sweetly for their intolerance in the shape 
of costs, and it secured the right of free speech in 
Plymouth and adjoining towns. 

In 1862 a Church of England clergyman was guilty 
of a foul libel aflfecting the late Mrs. Bradlaugh and 
her two amiable and highly accomplished daughters, 
whom to know is to respect. "This fellow," says 



156 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Bradlaugh, " I compelled to retract every word he 
had uttered, and to pay a hundred pounds, which, after 
deducting costs, was divided amongst various charitable 
institutions. The reverend libeller wrote me an abject 
letter, begging me not to ruin his prospects in the Church 
by publishing his name. I consented, and he has since 
repaid my mercy by losing no opportunity of being of- 
fensive. He is a prominent contributor to ' TheEock,* 
and a fierce ultra-Protestant." Mr. Bradlaugh' s rela- 
tions with the Anglican priesthood, it must be ad- 
mitted, have at all times been most unfortunate. 

To the Reform League, in 1867, Mr. Bradlaugh 
rendered most valuable services, — services which, 
when his connection with the association ceased, were 
handsomely acknowledged in writing by the president, 
Mr. Beales, and the secretary, Mr. George Howell. 
To his marvellous courage and perseverance is it like- 
wise owing that the last fetter has been struck off the 
press of England. Up to 1869 every newspaper was 
required by law to give secm^ities to the extent of four 
thousand dollars against the appearance of blasphemous 
or seditious libels. Mr. Bradlaugh, refusing compliance, 
printed his journal " in defiance of her Majesty's Gov- 
ernment," and so repeatedly baffled the law officers of 
the crown in their prosecutions, that the statute had 
finally to be repealed, the late Mr. J. S. Mill writing 
thus to the defendant in connection with the event : 
' ' You have gained a very honorable success in obtain- 
ing a repeal of the mischievous act by your persevering 
resistance. ' ' Mr. Bradlaugh was liliewise instrumental, 
after much costly litigation, in establishing the com- 
petenc}^ of freethinkers to give evidence in courts of 
law. He carried a case in which his testimony as 



CHABLES BRADLAUGH. 157 

plaintiff was objected to from court to court till the 
Evidence Acts of 1869 and 1870 eventually relieved 
freethinkers from the disability so grievous and unjust. 
No sooner was he returned to Parliament than he found 
himself confronted by a similar difScult}^ So fresh in 
the public mind and so dramatic were the circumstances 
attending the attempt to exclude him from the House, 
that they need not be narrated here. Suffice it to say 
that the courage, ability, and tact with which Mr. 
Bradlaugh conducted his case have been handsomely 
acknowledged even by bitter opponents. 

During the Franco-Prussian war, Mr. Bradlaugh took 
no active part in favor of either side till the installation 
of the provisional republican government. Then, as 
might have been expected, he used his utmost influence 
on behalf of France. Great meetings were held in 
London, and in the leading provincial towns, to ex- 
press sympathy with the struggling republic, which, it 
was hoped, might ultimately be able to drive the in- 
vader from French soil. Twice was Mr. Bradlaugh 
put under arrest — once by the provisional govern- 
ment, and once by M. Thiers — for his presumed sup- 
port of dangerous sections of the republican party ; but 
his loj^alty to the cause of free government in France 
did not go unacknowledged. The Tours government 
thanked him for his fraternal efforts in a long and flat- 
tering letter signed by Gambetta, Cremieux, Glais Bi- 
zoin, and Fourichon ; while M. Tissot, the French charge 
d'affaires in England, and Emmanuel Arago, a mem- 
ber of the provisional government, addressed him in- 
dividually, the last-named eminent man concluding 
his note with the words : " Mr. Bradlaugh est et sera 
toujours dans la republique notre concitoyen." 



158 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

In 1873 Mr. Bradlaugh conveyed to the short-lived 
republican government of Spain the congratulations 
of a great Eadical meeting held in the Town Hall of 
Birmingham, and was received bj^ the republicans of 
nearly every shade with open arms, notwithstanding an 
intimation, lodged by Mr. Layard in his ambassadorial 
capacit}^, that the Queen of England w^ould regard any 
manifestations of confidence in Mr. Bradlaugh as a 
personal affront. The speech which the English icono- 
clast delivered at the gi'eat banquet given in his honor 
at Madrid was marked by singular moderation of tone. 
He was perhaps the first Englishman who foresaw the 
accession of the Alphonsists to power. 

Towards the end of 1873 Mr. Bradlaugh visited the 
United States of America, and commenced an exten- 
sive lecturing tour, dealing with such subjects as Eng- 
lish republicanism, the Irish land question, &c. ; and, 
wisely shunning the field of religious controversy, he 
lectured in all the chief towns of New England and the 
middle States, and met generallj^ with a most cordial 
reception. At Boston — cultured, critical Boston — 
Wendell Phillips, '' the silver-tongued Demosthenes 
of America," presided at Mr. Bradlaugh' s lecture, with 
Senator Sumner and Lloj^d Garrison on the platform 
beside him. Mr. Phillips introduced* the gi-eat bug- 
bear of English public life as ' ' the Samuel Adams of 
1873," the Samuel Adams of 1766 being " that austere 
patriot alwa3's faithful and true " who spoke the first 
words of defiant protest against the tjTanny of English 
monarchical rule in New England. The lecturer real- 
ized on an average the handsome sum of one hundred 
and sixty dollars per lecture. 

On the occasion of the Prince of Wales' mischievous 



CHARLES BRADLAUGH. 159 

and insidiously planned jaunt to India, Mr. Bradlaugh 
was not wanting to the popular cause. He called the 
people together in Hyde Park, in which he may be said 
to have preserved the right of public meeting, and 
entered a spirited though unavailing protest against the 
subsidy ; and petitions bearing one hundred and thirty- 
five thousand signatures were in consequence laid on 
the table of the House of Commons. The shameless 
Tichborne imposture he relentlessly exposed, and 
throughout the late disgraceful Jingo episode in the 
history of the nation he was faithful even to the shed- 
ding of blood. At the second of the two memorable 
Jingo demonstrations in Hyde Park, he would in all 
probability have been killed but for his enoimous 
bodily strength and personal intrepidity. As it was, 
his left arm, with which he protected his head from the 
savage blows of his assailants, fell powerless by his 
side before he could cleave his way with a heavy trun- 
cheon to a place of safety. Erysipelas supervened, 
and for three weeks his life was in peril. It is but fair 
to add that five of his foemen found their way to St. 
George's Hospital. 

I have mentioned these matters with perhaps tedious 
minuteness, because in public life Mr. Bradlaugh, like 
politicians in better repute, has a right to be judged by 
his "fruits." It is but too common in respectable 
circles to regard him as a vulgar, self-seeking dema- 
gogue. Now, demagogue he may be, but certainly 
not in the objectionable, accepted sense of the word. 
He has never concealed his anxiety to get into Parlia- 
ment ; but of all the roads by which St. Stephen's may 
be approached he has certainly chosen the least likely 
and the most arduous. He has been at a world of 



160 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

pains to spoil Ms own chances. All the great " in- 
terests " — royalty, aristocracy, plutocracy, church, 
chapel, public house — have arra3''ed themselves against 
him. Yet, excepting Mr. Gladstone, this man has per- 
haps the most attached personal following of any poli- 
tician in England. This unique position he has won 
by his daring, by his intellect, by his Titanic energy, 
and by his general thoroughness of character. If he 
is not a real hero, he is a surprisingly clever counterfeit. 
In his own way, and by his own example, he has in- 
spired many thousands of the most abject of his coun- 
trymen with re-invigorated feelings of self-reliance and 
renewed hope on earth. He has taught them the ines- 
timable lesson of self-help, of righteous indignation 
against oppression. 

On the other hand, like nearly all atheists whom I 
have known, he is a consummate egotist. He who rec- 
ognizes in nature no power greater than himself almost 
necessarily rises rapidly in self-esteem. There is very 
little room left for the Christian virtues of patience, hu- 
mility, charity. Indeed, these are pretty much what 
Mf. Bradlaugh attributes to Christ as faults of charac- 
ter. There is no God, and Charles Bradlaugh is his 
prophet. This is the secret of his power. Not that I 
mean to affirm in the least that Bradlaugh 's egotism is 
incompatible with the common weal. In a different 
way from Beesly or Spurgeon, he has arrived at cer- 
tainty. That is aU. He might sslj, like Faust, — 

" No scruples or doubts in my bosom dwell, 
Nor idle fears of devils in hell." 

Hurrah for the "Everlasting No!" On this sure 
foundation let the edifice of human happiness be erected. 



CHARLES BEADLAXJGH. 161 

Absolute selfishness more or less enlightened — call it 
individualism, or by whatever name you will — is the 
way, the truth, and the life. Whenever any great 
world-synthesis of religious or moral ideas has broken 
down, this has been the inevitable result of analysis. 
But the human race can never permanently live on 
negations. In the heat of conflict, while the old system 
is dying and the new is unborn, they may appear almost 
like gospel truths ; but, when the ground has once been 
fairly cleared, their significance is at an end. Men once 
more begin to recognize in nature a more profound pur- 
pose, a more all-pervading intelligence, a more sacred 
continuity, than before. Comte attempted to piece to- 
gether the broken links of our faith, but failed. Mr. 
Bradlaugh merely dances an Indian war-dance in paint 
and feathers among the debris. It is, in my opinion, a 
poor and questionable occupation for so able a man. 
The Deliverer is yet to come, and there are many signs 
that he cannot now be far ofi". Meantime wise men 
will possess their souls in patience, awaiting with confi- 
dence the dawn of the better day. ' ' Almighty God ! 
thou wilt cause the daj^ to dawn ; but as yet struggles 
the twelfth hour of the night. Nocturnal birds of prey 
are on the wing ; the dead walk ; the living dream." 

But all this has little to do with Mr. Bradlaugh 's 
politics, which are of this world, and not of the next. 
He is peculiarly wanted at this moment at St. 
Stephen's, where a disease worse than paratysis has 
seized on the legislative bod}^ If the corpse can be 
revivified, he is the man to do it ; and Northampton has 
deserved well of the country at large in securing his 
return, should we even take no higher ground than 
this, that desperate diseases require desperate remedies. 



162 EMINENT LIBERALS IN PAELIAMENT. 

I am, moreover, bound to say this in favor of Mr. 
Bradlaugh as a politician, that in all my experience I 
have never known him take the wrong side on any pub- 
lic question. And what he has been in the past he will 
be in the future. He could not now betray the people 
though he were to try. It is a disgrace to any system 
of government pretending to be representative that the 
acknowledged chief of militant English republicanism, 
and, what is of less consequence, of organized secular- 
ism, should have so long been excluded from the legis- 
lature of a country which he has done so much by 
ceaseless toil to preserve from sinking into political 
apathy. A better plea than the protracted exclusion 
of Mr. Bradlaugh from the House of Commons could 
not be adduced in favor of Mr. Hare's scheme of pro- 
portional representation. 

It remains to glance, however briefly, at Mr. Brad- 
laugh's published writings. These consist chiefly of 
theological and political essays. Of the former, the 
philosophical or expositional portion is, for a very 
diff'erent reason, about as worthless as those of Mr. 
Spurgeon ; while the historical — as, for example, the 
lives of David, of Jacob, and Jonah — is, to say the least, 
very amusing, though I should scarcely have thought 
the game worth the candle. Of his political works, on 
the other hand, all are accurate and of immediate in- 
terest. "Hints to Emigrants to the United States," 
in particular, no intending emigTant should be without. 
It is a plain, unvarnished tale, told by the most compe- 
tent and impartial observer who has yet applied his 
mind to this important subject. His sketches of Crom- 
well and Washington, though biography is by no means 
his forte, display statesmanlike insight. I conclude 
with the words of final '' Contrast : " — 



CHAELES BRADLAUGH. 163 

" A fitting emblem for Oliver Cromwell is presented 
by'the grandly glorious western sunset. Still mighty 
in the fierceness of its rays, few eyes can look steadily 
into the golden radiance of that evening sun : the 
strongest must lower their glances, dazzled by its bril- 
liance. Every cloud is rich with ruddy gilding, as if 
the mere presence of that sun made glorious the very 
path it trod. And yet, while one looks, the tints 
deepen into scarlet, crimson, purple, as though that 
sun had been some mailed warrior, who had gained his 
grand pre-eminence by force of steel, and had left a 
bloody track to mark his steps to power. And, even 
while you pause to look, the thick dark veil of night 
falls over all, with a blackness so cold, complete, and 
impenetrable, as to make you almost doubt the reality 
of the mighty magnificence which yet has scarcely 
ceased. In the eventide of his life's day such a sun 
was Cromwell. Few men might look him fairly in the 
face as peers in strength. His presence gives a glory 
to the history page which gilds the smaller men whom 
he led. And yet Tredah and Worcester, Preston and 
Dunbar, and a host of other encrimsoned clouds compel 
us to remember how much the sword was used to carve 
his steps to rule. And then comes the night of death, 
— so thickly black, that even the grave cannot protect 
Cromwell's bones from the gibbet's desecration. And 
not unfittingly might the sunrise, almost without twi- 
light, in the same land, do service as emblem for 
George Washington. He must be a bold man who, in 
the mists and chills of the dying night, not certain of 
its coming, would dare to watch for the rising sun. 
And yet, while he watches, the silver raj^s, climbing 
over the horizon's hill, shed light and clearness round ; 



164 EMIKEXT LIBERALS IN PARLIAMENT. 

and soon a golden warmth breathes life and health and 
beauty into blade and bud, giving hope of the meridian 
splendor soon to come. George Washington was the 
morning sun of a day whose noontide has not yet been 
marked, — a day of liberty rendered more possible now 
that slavery's cloud no longer hides the sun ; a day the 
enduring light of which depends alone on the honest 
republicanism of those who now dwell in that land 
where Washington was doorkeeper in Liberty's temple." 



EMINENT LIBERALS 

OUT OF PAELIAMEKT. 



EMINENT LIBEEALS OUT OF 
PAELIAMENT. 



I. 

JOHN MORLEY. 



" He was a scliolar, and a ripe and good one, 
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading." 

OF all Swift's bitter sayings, the bitterest, perhaps, 
was his observation that mankind are about as 
well fitted for flying as for thinking. If this be true, — 
and it is not necessary to be much of a misanthrope to 
admit, that, generally speaking, the human mind is a 
very imperfect instrument, — nothing can be more de- 
plorable than the slight esteem in which the ablest 
thinkers are held by the majority of English electors. 

" Thirty millions of people, mostly fools," and with- 
out so much as the capacity to discern the importance 
of putting the helm of the state into the hands of the 
least foolish ! Howbeit, the phenomenon is not new. 
" There was a little cit}^, and few men within it ; and 
there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and 
built great bulwarks against it. Now, there was found 
in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered 
the city ; yet no man remembered that same poor man." 
The true " saviours of society" are, after all, its ori- 
ginal thinkers. Of these England has at no time been 

167 



168 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

without her share ; and, in her treatment of them, politi- 
cally speaking, she has walked with remarkable fidelity 
in the footsteps of the men of "the little city." Wit- 
ness Mill and Westminster. Westminster, in a moment 
of illumination, elected as her representative in Parlia- 
ment the greatest political thinker in the kingdom, but 
soon felt the honor she had thus done herself more than 
she could bear, and retm'ned in haste to her vomit. In 
no other civilized country except England could such a 
man have been excluded for any length of time from 
the national councils. In France half a dozen signed 
articles would probabty have brought him about as many 
offers of seats in the legislature, while in the United 
States he would, to a certainty, have been made an 
ambassador of the first rank. Even Spain values her 
Castelars and Pi y Margalls. England alone keeps on, 
if not absolutely stoning the prophets, at least studi- 
ously neglecting them. The result we see in the heavy 
arrears of domestic legislation, the helplessness and 
criminality of our diplomacy abroad, and, worse than 
all, the disgust with representative institutions which a 
ParUament of intellectual imbeciles is sure, sooner or 
later, to inspire. 

That so distinguished an authority as Mr. Morley, 
on nearly every one of the great questions — political 
and ethical — which agitate modern societ}^, should 
never yet have found a place at St. Stephen's is a 
standing impeachment of the political sagacity of popu- 
lar constituencies. And it would be an additional cause 
for rejoicing if a scholar and a gentleman like Mr. Mor- 
ley could be made to replace one or other of the corrupt 
ring of ignorant, vainglorious, aldermanic gluttons who 
have taken so many of the London constituencies cap- 



JOHN MORLEY. 169 

tive. The contrast of political type would be sharp 
and salutary, and an important outpost of the city 
Tammany might thus be carried. Westminster, after 
discarding Mr. Mill, was hardly entitled to have it 
placed in her power to reject the greatest of his disci- 
ples. 

As in the case of most speculative writers, the story 
of Mr. Morley's life is exceedingly simple, — almost 
necessarily an autour de ma cliamhre affair. His life is 
in his books, which have influenced the thoughts of 
many who have never read them. He was born at 
Blackburn in December, 1838, the son of a physician 
in good practice. The father set great store by learning, 
was somewhat eccentric, and a not wholly judicious 
parent. As might be expected in such circumstances, 
the future editor of " The Fortnightly" went the regu- 
lar round of school, college, and bar. He was educated 
at Cheltenham College, whence he proceeded to Oxford, 
where he graduated in 1859. Subsequently he kept 
terms at Lincoln's Inn, and was duly "called" to the 
bar by that honorable society, but never practised. 

It is not a little remarkable that all this time Mr. 
Morley showed no particular aptitude or even liking for 
study. He who has since dug so sedulously about the 
very roots of the tree of knowledge, among the primary 
conceptions of the human race, he who is now in the very 
vanguard of " free thought," was at college something 
of a mooning " Evangelical." Who in this mysterious 
world can foresee himself? What a contrast, for exam- 
ple, is here to the experience of his friend Mill, whose 
old pagan father, James, is credibly said to have im- 
parted to him when an urchin the somewhat startling 
intelligence that there is no God, coupled with a prudent 



170 EMINENT LIBEEALS OUT OF PABLIAMENT. 

injunction to keep the information to himself ! Yet John 
Stuart Mill, if he had lived much longer, was apparently 
bidding fair to take a high place, not, certainly, among 
orthodox believers, but among the worthies of the Uni- 
tarian calendar. Most powerful intellects are either 
religious or religiously anti-religious, superstitious or 
superstitiously anti-superstitious. Mr. Morley belongs 
to the latter category, and the fact is not inexplicable. 
At a certain period of youth, when the passions are 
strong and reflection is weak, religious emotions very 
frequently come in — and come in opportunely — to 
supply the restraining influence of reason. When they 
are no longer needed, they die out ; and, if they have 
been very fervid, the more ingenuous order of minds is 
but too apt to resent them as idle delusions, and to rush 
into opposite extremes. Weaker and less ingenuous 
natures profess to feel them after they have ceased to 
influence, and so become religious hj^ocrites. The 
transition is not easy to make, and I am not sure that 
Mr. Morley has been quite successful in the operation. 
Throughout his writings, with all their patient truth- 
fulness and candor, I think I can discern a certain 
undercuiTent of unconscious bias on the question of 
religion, as if the pendulum of reason had swung back 
with such violence as to become slightly overbalanced. 
Unlilve Mill, who approached the subject from a unique 
stand-point of unpartialitj', he makes at once too much 
and too little of the theme. But, of this, more anon. 

In 1860 Mr. Morle}^ commenced his career as a jour- 
nalist and man of letters, and from the fii'st he laid the 
hand of a master on whatever he touched. His earliest 
contributions were to " The Leader," then an organ of 
advanced Liberalism, of which George Henry Lewes 



JOHN MORLEY. 171 

was the first editor. He worked with a will, and soon 
became known to those whose business it is to gauge 
intellectual capacity. In 1863 he joined the staff of 
"The Saturday Review," on which he remained for 
five or six years. During that period he had for col- 
laborateurs three of the most formidable intellectual 
gladiators in England; viz., Sir James Fitzjames 
Stephen, Sir William Vernon Har court, and Sir Henry 
Maine. 

" Tis heavy odds against the gods 
When they will match with Myrmidons." 

But Mr. Morley was equal to the occasion. Many of 
his " Saturday Review" articles were characterized by 
striking originality of thought and fearlessness of ex- 
pression. One in particular, entitled "New Ideas," 
made so deep an impression on Mr. John Stuart Mill, 
that he wrote to a friend anxiously inquiring who the 
author might be ; and thus were laid the foundations 
of a lifelong friendship of no ordinary intimacy and 
reciprocal esteem. I know hardly any thing finer in 
prose than the reverence, without obsequiousness, which 
pervades Mr. Morley 's article on the death of Mill. It 
is tl^e verj" poetry of a manly sorrow. " The nightin- 
gale which he longed for fills the darkness with music, 
but not for the ear of the dead master : he rests in the 
deeper darkness where the silence is unbroken forever. 
We ma}'- console ourselves with the reflection offered by 
the dying Socrates to his sorrowful companions : He 
who has arrayed the soul in her own proper jewels of 
moderation and justice and courage and nobleness and 
truth is ever ready for the journey when his time comes. 
We have lost a great teacher and example of knowledge 



172 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 



and virtue ; but men will long feel the presence of his 
character about them, making them ashamed of what 
is indolent or selfish, and encouraging them to all dis- 
interested labor, both in tr3dng to do good and in trying 
to find out what the good is, which is harder." 

Ever ready to do battle in the front rank of Liberal- 
ism, Mr. Morley chivalrously undertook to edit " The 
Morning Star " at a time when, for reasons chiefly 
connected with the commercial management, success 
was no longer possible. Through no fault of his, it was 
permitted to expire, and Radicalism thus lost a most 
faithful and competent advocate. From that day till 
the moment when he recentl}^ assumed the editorship 
of " The Pall Mall Gazette," that loss remained unre- 
paired, and it has been one of no ordinary seriousness 
to the party and to the country ; for since that time 
metropolitan Radicalism can hardly be said to have 
been represented in the daily press. 

In 1867 Mr. Morley succeeded Mr. Lewes in tlie 
editorship of " The Fortnightly," and in his hands a 
hitherto colorless magazine soon became the recog- 
nized medium of all manner of new and, not unfre- 
quently, very unpopular ideas. And this bold, 
uncompromising policy, I am glad to think, has met 
with a gTatifjdng measure of success. "The Fort- 
nightly" is a tower of strength to Radicalism in all its 
higher wallvs, and its editor is ever vigilant and resolute 
to " hold the fort" against all comers. 

In the same year that Mr. Morley became the editor 
of "The Fortnightly," he paid a short visit to the 
United States, and was introduced at the White House 
to the then President, Andrew Johnson. He did not, 
like certain weak-minded travellers, with whom we are 



JOHN MOELEY. 173 

all acquainted, return professing to be cured for life of 
republican ideals. On the contrary, he came back 
favorably impressed with the simplicity of American 
official life, and confirmed generally in his democratic 
sympathies. 

In 1869, at a by-election, Mr. Morley contested his 
native Blackburn in the Radical interest, but without 
success. The "Conservative working-man" was 
against him. In certain Lancashire constituencies it 
can no longer be doubted that this anomalous being 
exists, and exists in force. Conservatism implies that 
there is something to conserve ; but in these God- 
forsaken regions you have the effect without the cause, 
— men guarding rigorously what they never possessed. 
It is as if a slave witii freedom within his grasp should 
cling tenaciously to his chains. Howbeit, Mr. Morley 
made as stubborn a fight as he did at Westminster at 
the last general election, and showed himself as cogent 
with his tongue on the platform as with his pen in the 
closet. He is a most skilful and persuasive speaker, 
with hardly a trace of those oratorical defects which 
general^ mar the public utterances of great authors. 
He knows the difference between the written and the 
spoken linguistic mould, and can deftly cast his 
thoughts in either. Dissenting, as he does, even from 
the most heterodox Dissenters, I have yet heard him 
speak with rare acceptance on a Liberation Society's 
platform to the pink and fiower of English Noncon- 
formity. Such a spectacle of ' mutual toleration is 
among the most hopeful signs of English public life. 

But it is at home in his literary workshop that the 
editor of ' ' The Fortnightly ' ' will be seen to most ad- 
vantage. The appointments of Berkeley Lodge, Put- 



174 EMINENT LIBEBALS OUT OP PARLIAMENT. 

ney, are such as to make the mouths of more obscure 
journpjists water. The ample library looks out on a 
beautifully embowered lawn, while every domestic detail 
is /perfect. A man who cannot write well with such 
liappy surroundings has hopelessly mistaken his calling. 
And best of all is the frank, truthful, earnest conver- 
sation of the host himself. There is no evasion, no 
hedging. When I first met him, we plunged right into 
the questions of Deity, of the immortality of the soul, 
of the republic, of Robespierre, of Burke, of his friend 
Chamberlain, et de omni scibUi, in an hour's time. 

In reflecting, he has a curious habit of listening, as it 
were, to the tones of some far-off voice. I could not 
agree with many of his positions, but felt the greatest 
difficulty in maintaining my own. . His religious scepti- 
cism is very deep and subtle. He might, I dare say, 
if hard pressed, admit that there are evidences of 
divine arrangement in the universe amounting to a low 
degree of probability ; and, as regards a life beyond the 
grave, he might go the length of dreading, with Ham- 
let, " what di'eams may come in that sleep of death." 
But, in any case, he would turn away from such con- 
jectural speculations, and substitute social for religious 
duties. This at once raises the intricate question of 
the influence of religion on morality. Is the connection 
necessary, or accidental? It would not be difficult, for 
example, to show that the pagan Cetewaj^o was, 
throughout the Zulu troubles, a pattern of justice as 
compared with our eminently Christian High Commis- 
sioner, Sir Bartle Frere ; or that so public-spirited a 
citizen and infidel as Mr. Charles Bradlaugh would be 
a much more trustworthy custodian of other people's 
moneys than the pious directors of the City of Glasgow 
Bank. 



JOHN MORLEY. 175 

But, granted that a man's religion has little or no 
influence over his moral conduct, what then? Man 
will ponder the strange problem of his destiny ; and 
those who believe that religion is a mere mental in- 
firmity must be prepared boldly to sum it up in the 
terrible words of Richter : " Of the world will become a 
world-machine, of God a force, and of the second world 
a coffin." Such teaching, it can hardly be doubted, 
would profoundl}^ alter the hopes, if not the moralities, 
of the more energetic portion of the human family. 
Bm-ns, in his most despairing poem, sang — 

" The poor, oppressed honest man 
Had surely ne'er been born 
Had there not been some recompense 
To comfort those who mourn." 

No comfort, alas ! no recompense. In such sore plight 
humanity, I fear, would be disposed to say with Marcus 
Antoninus, " It were well to die if there be gods, and 
sad to live if there be none." 

With respect to the question of a republic, Mr. Mor- 
ley's attitude, as might be expected in so courageous 
a political thinl^er, is clearly defined. He recognizes 
that, until the republican banner is boldly unfurled, we 
who are Radicals are condemned to strike at phantoms. 
He is, of com^se, at the same time, no partisan of any 
revolution other than a revolution of public opinion. 
In his powerful treatise on " Compromise," he says, 
" Our conviction is not, on the present hypothesis, that 
monarchy ought to be swept away in England, but that 
monarchy produces certain mischievous consequences 
to the public spirit of the community. And so what 
we are bound to do is to take care not to conceal this 



176 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

conviction ; to abstain scrupulously from all kinds of 
action and observance, public or private, which tend 
ever so remotely to foster the ignoble and degrading 
elements that exist in a court, and spread from it out- 
wards ; and to use all the influence we have, however 
slight it may be, in leading public opinion to a right 
attitude of contempt and dislike for these ignoble and 
degrading elements, and the conduct engendered by 
them." This is not the language of saponaceous 
bishops or of turtle-fed aldermen ; but it is " the voice 
of sense and truth," albeit it was never heard at the 
Guildhall. 

With nearly all that Mr. Morley has written on Vol- 
taire, Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot, and the French Rev- 
olution, I cordially concur. To Robespierre alone I 
think he has done scant justice, while to Burke he has 
been more than kind. With the impartiality of a judge, 
and the insight of a statesman rather than of a man of 
letters, he has succeeded in dispelling much of the ob- 
scurity in which Mr. Carlyle is chiefly responsible for 
having involved the greatest movement of the mind of 
modern Europe. Carlyle' s "French Revolution" is 
undoubtedly a work of genius ; but so has a lurid ' ' noc- 
turne ' ' by Mr. Whistler been pronounced to be a work 
of genius. The trouble is that neither has the smallest 
resemblance to the original. The time is coming when, 
it is to be hoped, the English people will have forgotten 
all about the " sea-greenness " of Robespierre, and re- 
member only his unquestioned and unquestionable ' ' in- 
corruptibilitj^ " Mr. Morley' s objection to Carlyle 's 
bogey does not lie in a nickname ; but I think he would, 
perhaps, have regarded Robespierre with a kindlier eye 
if he had not been the author of the dictum, " Atheism 



JOHN MORLEY. 177 

is aristocratic. The idea of a Great Being who watches 
over oppressed in7iocence and punishes triumphant crime 
is essentially the idea of the people,''^ 

Mr. Morley' s admiration for Burke I am wholly un- 
able to comprehend. To bracket him with Milton is 
lilve comparing a penny whistle to an organ. Nay, 
those who thought only of dining when he thought of 
convincing were not so culpable as has been insinuated. 
It would have been greatly to the advantage of England 
and of Europe if Burke had never crossed St. George's 
Channel. 

As a practical politician, Mr. Morley has strenuously 
exerted himself to secure two great objects, — to level 
down the Church politically, and to level up the work- 
ing-class socially, with a view to unite the whole people 
in the pursuit of national as distinguished from sectional 
ideals. As president of the Midland Institute, in 1876, 
he delivered a remarkable address on " Popular Cul- 
ture " in the Birmingham Town Hall, — an address 
which will be found to embody opinions of the highest 
wisdom, and sentiments of the noblest aspiration. It 
ends thus, and with it this notice must also end : " When 
our names are blotted out and our place knows us no 
more, the energy of each social service will remain, and 
so, too, let us not forget, will each social disservice re- 
main like the unending stream of one of Nature's forces. 
The thought that this is so may well lighten the poor 
perplexities of our daily life, and even soothe the pang 
of its calamities. It lifts us from our feet as on wings, 
opening a larger meaning to our private toil and a high- 
er purpose to our public endeavor ; it makes the morn- 
ing as we awake to its welcome, and the evening like a 
soft garment as it wraps us about ; it nerves our arm 



178 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

with boldness against oppression and injustice, and 
strengthens our voice with deeper accents against false- 
hood, while we are yet in the full noon of our days ; jes, 
and perhaps it will shed some ray of consolation when 
our eyes are growing dun to it all, and we go down into 
the Valley of Darkness." 



11. 

ROBERT WILLIAM DALE. 

" Well done ! thy words are great and bold: 
At times they seem to me. 
Like Luther's in the days of old, 
Half battles for the free." 

EADICALISM is like a great world-haven which 
many ships reach by divers ocean-tracks. It is 
a generous fruit which grows on trees of many species. 
The editor of ' ' The Fortnightly,' ' about whom I had 
somewhat to say in the preceding article, and the Won- 
hearted pastor of Carr's-lane Chapel, Bkmingham, — 
what a contrast ! How far apart their motives ! how 
closely allied their pubhc aims ! The earnest ' ' ration- 
alist" and the earnest religionist are sworn brothers 
in political conflict, — the one, because, like Abou Ben 
Adhem, he is content to be written down simply " as 
one that loves his fellow-men ; " the other, because he 
is penetrated by the apostolic conception that he is a 
"co-worker" with his Divine Master in the sacred 
cause of humanity. 

Mr. Dale is a political Christian, a sort of spiritual 
ultilitarian of a remarkable type, — the best living em- 
bodiment of the traditions of the sect to which Ohver 
Cromwell belonged ; not orthodox certainly, as the 
Scribes and Pharisees hold orthodoxy, but still, for so 

powerful an intellect, strangely orthodox. 

179 



180 EMINENT LIBEKAXS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

" I am very sensible," says Swift, in his "Argu- 
ment to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity 
might be attended by some Inconveniences," "how 
much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to 
murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many dag- 
gled-tail parsons who happen to fall in their way and 
offend their e^^es ; but, at the same time, these wise 
reformers do not consider what an advantage and feli- 
city it is for great wits to be alwaj^s provided with 
objects of scorn and contempt in order to exercise and 
improve their talents and divert their spleen from fall- 
ing on each other or on themselves. . . . We are daily 
complaining of the gi-eat decline of wit among us ; and 
would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, 
topic we have left?" Well, if there are any such 
great wits about who have a desire to exercise their 
talents in this particular way, I should strongly recom- 
mend them to go down to Birmingham, and break a 
lance with the minister of Carr' s-lane Chapel. He' is 
a man of the people, and will give them a kindly wel- 
come. If they do not find him at home in his formida- 
bly equipped study, deep in the production of some 
sj^stematic theological treatise on the Atonement or the 
Ten Commandments, they will be pretty sure to dis- 
cover him either at* a Liberal ward committee, at the 
Liberal Association Rooms in consultation with the 
taciturn strategist Schnadhorst, or haranguing an ob- 
streperous multitude of electors in the Town Hall. 
\Yhen he is disengaged, he will be at their service ; and, 
if they get much amusement at his expense, I wonder. 

A happier, heartier man than Mr. Dale — he dis- 
claims the "Rev." as a rag of priestcraft — I never 
met, combining as he does in no ordinary measure 



BOBERT WILLIAM DALE. 181 

the laureate's desiderata of manhood, — " heart, head, 
hand." His practice squares with his theory of life to 
a nicety. His soul is in his work. Like Cromwell, he 
pra3^s to God, and keeps his powder dry. What good, 
he is never tired of asking, is the petition, " Thy will 
be done on earth as it is in heaven," if a man is not 
prepared at the call of duty to take off his coat and 
descend into the political arena to wrestle with the 
powers of Conservative darkness? In one of his 
"Nine Lectures on Preaching," delivered as L^^man 
Beecher lecturer at the University of Yale, Connecti- 
cut, — a series of papers not less distinguished by prac- 
tical wisdom than literary merit, — he told the students 
of the theological faculty, — 

' ' In your pastoral preaching you ought not to omit 
to illustrate the law of Christ in relation to public duty. 
Perhaps you have sometimes met good people who have 
informed jou, in a tone of spiritual self-complacency, 
that they have never been in a polling-booth. They 
do not seem to understand that the franchise is a trust, 
and that it imposes duties. A secretary of state might 
as well make it a religious boast that he habitually 
neglected some of the work belonging to his depart- 
ment. The duties of an individual voter may be less 
grave than the duties of an official politician ; but neg- 
lect in either case is a crime against the nation. I 
think it possible that the time may come when men 
who refuse to vote will be subjected to church disci- 
pline, like men who refuse to pay their debts. The 
plea that the discharge of political duty is inconsistent 
with spirituality ought to be denounced as a flagrant 
piece of hypocrisy. It is nothing else. The men who 
urge it are not too spiritual to make a caup in cotton or 



182 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

coffee. Although they profess to be alarmed at the 
spiritual terrors of the ballot-box and of an occasional 
hour in a political conunittee-room, they are not afraid 
that their spirituality will suffer if they spend eight 
hours every day in their store or their counting-house. 
Their spirituality is of such a curious temper that it 
receives no harm from pursuits — no matter how secu- 
lar — by which they can make money for themselves ; 
but they are afraid of the most disastrous consequences 
if they attempt to render any service to their country. 
The selfishness of these men is as contemptible as their 
hypocrisy. They consent to accept all the advantages 
which come from the political institutions of the nation, 
and from the zeal and fidelity of their fellow-citizens. 
. . . People who are so very spiritual that they feel 
compelled to abstain from political life ought also to 
renounce the benefits which the political exertions of 
their less spiritual fellow-citizens secure for them. 
They ought to decline the services of the police when 
they are assaulted ; they ought to refuse to appeal to 
such an unspiritual authority as a law court when their 
debts are not paid ; and when a legacy is left them they 
ought piously to abstain from accepting it, for it is only 
by the intervention of public law that they can inherit 
what their dead friends have left them. For men to 
claim the right to neglect their duties to the state on 
the ground of their piety, while they insist on the 
state protecting their persons, protecting their property, 
and protecting from disturbance even their religious 
meetings in which this exquisitely delicate and valitu- 
dinarian spirituality is developed, is gross unrighteous- 
ness. It is as morally disgraceful as for a clerk to 
claim his salary from his employer after leaving other 



EGBERT WILLIAM DALE. 183 

men to do the work for which his employer pays him." 
Plain speaking of this sort from the Carr's-lane and 
other Nonconformist pulpits of BuTiiingham has mate- 
rially helped to preserve the borough from the arrow of 
Barnaby which flieth by day, and the pestilence of 
Jingo which stalketh by night. 

Mr. Dale was born in London, in December, 1829. 
His early education was received chiefly at a private 
school in Finsbury Square, kept by a Mr. Willey. 
After a brief period of probation as an assistant master, 
he removed to Birmingham to attend Springhill Col- 
lege, a training-school of the Congregationalists, — the 
religious denomination of his parents. Here he re- 
mained for the whole curriculum of six yeai^ ; and in 
1853 he graduated at London University, carrying off 
the gold medal in the department of philosophy and 
political economy. Among his tutors at Springhill was 
Henry Rogers, author of the once popular work, "The 
Eclipse of Faith." Rogers had a fine literary taste, 
with which he did not fail to imbue his pupils. A 
strong friendship sprang up between the old man and 
Dale, and to this day the latter acknowledges his obli- 
gations to his master with almost juvenile warmth. 
Another remarkable friend of Dale's youth was a man 
renowned in the world of Evangelic Nonconformity, 
John Angell James. He was for over half a century 
the pastor of Carr's-lane Chapel, and Dale had no 
sooner finished his studies than he was appointed his 
colleague and successor. James imagined that he him- 
self was a stanch Calvinist. But Calvinism his suc- 
cessor could not swallow ; and, shortly after his appoint- 
ment, he one Sunday opened a vigorous fire on its 
cardinal dogma, and set the congregation by the ears. 



184 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAMENT. 

James, appealed to by alarmed church-goers, magnani- 
moLisl}' defended his colleague. 

' ' He is a 3^oung man,' ' he said ; ' ' but the root of 
the matter is in him. Wait: you will see." They 
waited, but did not see ; for the young man hardened 
his heart, and to this day repudiates the doctrine which 
" sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, a' for Thy glory," 
as unscriptural and revolting. James himself had a 
naive excuse for practically banishing it from his 
preaching. " Ah, well ! " he would say, " you see the 
Scriptures don't say much about it." 

In relation to eternal punishment, Mr. Dale's position 
is that of an exegetical Darwin. He believes that 
hereafter the spiritually fittest will alone ultimately sur- 
vive. With him the spiritual, and not the material, is the 
real. There is a Light which lighteth every man that 
Cometh into this world, be he Jew or Gentile, Christian 
or pagan. It is a plastic theory, of which much may 
be made by a humane mind. Accordingly, Mr. Dale 
is a very cosmopolitan sort of Christian. He is a strong 
admirer of Mr. Moody, of Moody and Sankey fame ; 
and he is a sworn friend, at the same time, of Mr. 
Crosskey, the leading Unitarian heresiarch of Birming- 
ham. 

"Of old things all are over-old, 

Of good tilings none are good enough ; 
He'll sliow that he can help to frame 
A Church of better stuff." 

The Carr' s-lane congregation consists of over fifteen 
hundred "souls," though I fear their pastor counts 
them as frequently by "votes." They are largely 
composed of working-men and small tradesmen, — near- 
ly all Liberals. A sprinkling are quasi-Conservatives ; 



EOBEET WILLIAM DALE. 186 

among the latter a wealthy alderman, about whom Mr. 
Dale tells with glee how he described one of his special 
expositions of Christian truth as " a brilliant farrago of 
democratic nonsense . ' ' 

And this has struck me as a peculiar feature of Bir- 
mingham Radicalism. It is intense, without being bit- 
ter or personally rancorous. It may be different in the 
actual throes of an election contest, which I have never 
witnessed ; but ordinarily there is a gratifjdng exhibition 
of mutual respect among political opponents. There 
is, at all events in the Dale f amity, a kindly tendency 
to regard a Tory as an " undeveloped Liberal," who will 
do better by and by. The political evangel, like the 
religious, is not completely closed to any. 

I shall never forget my first impression of the Dale 
household. A ward election was impending at the time ; 
and Mrs. Dale, a lady not less remarkable than her 
husband for vigor of mind and public spirit, was in the 
thick of it canvassing the women electors, note-book 
in hand, as if the salvation of the borough depended 
on the issue. I had alwa^^s regarded canvassing as more 
or less demoralizing work ; but it depends largely on the 
spirit in which it is conducted. Mrs. Dale was a model 
canvasser, using no argument — even with the most 
ignorant — which did not appeal to their better reason. 
The result was mutually beneficial. The accomplished 
lady had her sympathies with the poor braced, and her 
knowledge of their wants extended ; while her less 
fortunate sisters had their political education, to some 
extent at least, improved by coming in contact with a 
superior mind. The interest taken in politics by the 
youngest members of the family, hardly in their teens, 
would have been comical if it had not been so genuine 
and intelligent. 



186 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

The political soundness of Birmingham Mr. Dale 
traces back to the old Dr. Priestley leaven, which is still 
at work in the community. The good which that great 
man did has not been interred with his bones. The 
Tory mob of his day stoned him ; but the present gen- 
eration has built him a worthy sepulchre. The solidarity 
of the Bii'mingham Liberal vote is less easy to account 
for. Mr. Dale thinks the large number of small em- 
ployers of labor, who are onl}^ a few degrees removed 
from the condition of their employes^ has much to do 
with it ; and he is probably right. There is more of 
what the French call egalite in Birmingham than in any 
other town in England. No doubt there are snobs 
there as elsewhere ; but I have not had the misfortune 
to meet them. Eich men like Mr. Chamberlain are 
devoted to Radical principles, and that sets the fashion. 
Given, moreover, culture and religion on the same side, 
and the worst Conservative foe that remains to be over- 
come is ignorance. 

This last-named obstacle to the triumph of Radical- 
ism Mr. Dale has set himself vigorously to combat. 
He was one of the most strenuous champions of the 
famous National Education League, which had for its 
object the complete separation of religious from secular 
instruction in board schools. To seek to disestablish 
religion in the church, and to hasten to estabhsh it in 
the school, did not seem to some Nonconformists too 
glaring an inconsistenc3^ The minister of Carr's Lane 
thought otherwise, and was returned at the first school- 
board election in the purely " secular" interest, along 
with Chamberlain, Dawson, Wright, Dixon, and Vince. 
They were in a minorit}^ on account of the inexperience 
of the party managers in working the cumulative vote. 



EGBERT WILLIAM DALE. 187 

At the ensuing election, however, the}^ succeeded in 
securing a bare majority ; and public education in Bir- 
mingham was " secularized" at a blow. Since then, 
alas ! there has been a certain retrogression. 

The board, which consists of fifteen members, is 
subdivided into five committees, — Finance, Education 
and School Management, Sites and Buildings, General 
Purposes, and Night Schools ; and it requires no small 
amount of skilful manipulation to supply each of 
these with a Liberal chairman. Mr. Dale has acted as 
chairman of the hardest-worked of all the committees ; 
viz.. Education and School Management. He is, 
moreover, under the new government scheme for the 
better conduct of the grammar-school with its large 
revenues, a governor ; having been appointed to that 
honorable office by the University of London. But, 
though the School Board of Birmingham has discharged 
its duties with exemplary efficiency, Mr. Dale is 
opposed, on principle, to the multiplication of such 
authorities. He would strengthen the local parliament, 
the Birmingham Town Council, and place everj" civic 
interest in its keeping. The corporation already man- 
ages the gas and water supplies, and Mr. Dale would 
not shrink from charging it with the control of educa- 
tion and of the liquor traffic as well. I cannot but 
think he is right. Every thing that tends to fritter 
away the authority and dignity of our municipalities is 
an injury to the public spirit of a community, and 
there is no surer mode of bringing about a result so 
undesirable than the senseless multiplication of local 
boards. It is the latest application of one of the most 
ancient maxims of tyranny. Divide et impera. 

There is neither inside nor outside Parliament a more 



188 EMINENT LIBEEALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

eloquent and uncompromising advocate of church dises- 
tablishment than Mr. Dale. He approaches the ques- 
tion primarily from the old Puritan stand-point; viz., 
that the State cannot rightfully legislate for the Church. 
The latter is to the former what the conscience is to the 
individual. The things of Csesar and the things of 
God must be kept asunder. Regnum meum non est de 
hoc mundo. The union of Church and State is a foul 
liaison, which use can never convert into just matri- 
mony. Such is his theory. Now for a statement of 
the practical disadvantages of the Anglican establish- 
ment. " To a Nonconformist," he says in his "Im- 
pressions of America," — a series of admirable sketches, 
political, social, educational, and religious, contrib- 
uted to " The Nineteenth Century-," — " travelling in 
America, one of the freshest sensations arises from the 
absence of an ecclesiastical establishment. In England 
I am reminded wherever I go that the State is hostile 
to my religious opinions and practices. Diocesan 
episcopacy, in my judgment, deprives the commonalty 
of the Church of many of their rights, and releases 
them from many of their duties ; but in ever}^ parish I 
find an Episcopal clerg3inan, who, according to Mr. 
Forster's accurate description, is a servant of the 
State. Though I am a minister of religion, the civil 
government has placed me under the spiritual charge of 
the Vicar of Edgbaston : that excellent gentleman is 
my pastor and religious teacher. I am not obliged to 
hear him preach ; but the State has thought it neces- 
sary to intrust hun with the duty of instructing me iu 
Christian truth, and celebrating for my advantage the 
Christian sacraments. The doctrine of baptismal re- 
generation seems to me a mischievous superstition ; but 



EOBEET WILLIAM DALE. 189 

I cannot say this to anybody without being in revolt 
against a great national institution. Now and then I 
am bound to liberate my conscience, and I tell my con- 
gregation what I think of the doctrine ; but within a 
couple of hundred yards there are two national build- 
ings, in which, under the authority of the State, the 
State clergy give thanks to Almighty God for the 
regeneration of every child they baptize, and in which 
gi'own men and women are taught that in baptism they 
were made members of Christ, children of God, and 
inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. The law is 
against me. It tolerates me, but condemns me. It 
barks, though it does not bite. It describes me as 
being among those people in divers parts of this realm 
who, ^ following their own sensuality and living without 
knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully ancl schis- 
matically refuse to come to parish churches.' It has 
provided a Book of Conunon Prayer, that ' every person 
within this realm may certainty know the rule to which 
he is to conform in public worship.' I am permitted to 
break the rule ; but the rule stands. It is the policy of 
the State to induce the country to accept or retain 
religious doctrines which seem to me to be erroneous, 
and an ecclesiastical polity which seems to me to be 
unfriendly to the free and vigorous development of the 
rehgious life. The position of a Nonconformist in this 
country is, to say the least, not a pleasant one. His 
religious work is carried on in the presence of a gov- 
ernment which condemns his creed, condemns his 
modes of worship, condemns his religious organization, 
and sustains the authority of a hostile Church. In the 
United States I breathed freely." 

Mr. Dale has travelled in the East and in the West. 



190 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

He has visited Egypt, the Sinaitic Desert, and Pales- 
tine. His American wanderings, however, have borne 
the most valuable fruit. His published "Impressions" 
of the States are the best compliment to Sir Charles 
Dilke's " Greater Britain " with which I am acquainted. 
They supply exactly the sort of information one desires 
with regard to that mighty theatre of new social and 
political experiments. That so many competent ob- 
servers are now turning theh footsteps towards the far 
West is a subject for unqualified congratulation. 

" Was ' The Mayflower ' launched by cowards ? 
Steered by men behind their time ? 
Turn those paths towards past, or future, 
That make Plymouth Rock sublime ? " 

It is a Western and not an Eastern policy of which 
England stands most in need. Overthrow the aris- 
tocrac}^ of this countrj^, and there will be no insuperable 
barrier to a grand re-union of the two great branches 
of the English-speaking race. 

When the pressure of Mr. Dale' s pastoral and politi- 
cal duties is considered, the tale of his literary labors 
is immense. They include a "Life of John Angell 
James," a volume of "Week-Day Sermons," "The 
Atonement,' ' which ran through seven editions in four 
years, "Lectures on Preaching," "Discourses on 
Special Occasions," " The Ten Commandments," 
" Lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews," an " Essay 
on Lacordahe," another on "George Dawson," "A 
Reply to Mr. Matthew Arnold' s Attack on Puritanism," 
" The Necessity for an Ethical Revival," &c. Besides 
contributing to "The British Quarterly," " The Fort- 
nightly," " The Contemporary," and " The Nineteenth 



BOBERT WILLIAM DALE. 191 

Century," he has acted as joint editor of" The Eclectic 
Review, ' ' and for seven years as editor of ' ' The Con- 
gregationalist," the organ of his denomination. In 
regard to many of these multifarious matters, I am far 
from being able to see eye to eye with him ; but he is 
always earnest, honest, able, tolerant, the steady, stout- 
hearted friend of civil and religious liberty, as he un- 
derstands civil and religious libertj^ In one of the 
hymns compiled by Mr. Dale, still sung at Carr's-lane 
Chapel, I read, — 

" Unlearn not the lore tliy Wycliffe well learned, 
Forsake not the cause thy Milton approved, 
Forget not the fire where thy Latimer burned, 
Nor turn from the truth thy Cromwell so loved." 

To younger Eadicals among us, who draw inspiration 
from less venerable historic sources, such injunctions 
may appear superfluous. But they are still real to 
many of the best men and women in England, with 
whom it should be our pride and pleasure to co-operate. 
Mr. Dale can pour new wine into old bottles without 
accident. He is likewise perfectly familiar with the 
uses of the newest bottles of Liberalism, as will be dis- 
covered by any one who cares to read his presidential 
address delivered to the members of the Birmingham 
Junior Liberal Association in October, 1878. He is 
one of the most effective platform speakers in Great 
Britain, and would make a heaven-born parliamentary 
candidate for a great popular constituencj^ Is it past 
prajdng for that such a man should be translated from 
Carr's Lane, Birmingham, to the wider sphere of use- 
fulness at St. Stephen's, Westminster? 



III. 

JOSEPH ARCH. 

" Men rough and rude pressed round 
To hear the praise of one 
Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff, 
As homespun as their own." 

SINCE Wat Tyler perished b}^ the hand of the assas- 
sin Maj^or of London, Walworth, the agricultural 
laborers of England have had no more sincere and 
capable leader than Joseph Arch. To sketch his 
career is in a gTeat measure to depict the condition and 
characteristics of his class, — a numerous and unportant 
section of Englishmen, — of whom, until quite recently, 
less, perhaps, was known for certain than of Afghans, 
Zulus, or the Ten Lost Tribes. For centuries they had 
been forgotten helots, — mute bearers of other men's 
burdens, — the starved, unlettered, hereditar}^ bonds- 
men of " merr}^ England." Their miser}' gave the lie 
direct to our boasted prosperity and freedom. The 
statue might be imposing ; but the feet were obviously 
of cla}^ " And behold the tears of such as were 
oppressed, and they had no comforter ; and on the side 
of the oppressors there was power." Yea, ver}' great 
power and vcr}^ tenible oppression. On the agi'icul- 
tural laborer of England rests to this day the curse of 
the Norman Conquest, — the economic damnation of 

192 



JOSEPH ARCH. 193 

the " three profits," — of which our " miraculous Pre- 
mier" is so enamoured, that he has taken to demon- 
strating that the arrangement is a law of nature. 

The English laborer is the true servus servorum. the 
slave of the farmer, who is in turn the slave of land- 
lord and parson. On him presses with crushing weight 
the whole fabric of " society." He is the subject-mat- 
ter, the corpus vile of the great unpaid. Where were 
the judicial dignity of Justice Shallow but for the pec- 
cant Hodge who pilfers a turnip, gathers a mushroom, 
or knocks over a hare? Where were the pride of 
"officers and gentlemen," were there no regiments of 
full privates recruited from rural England to command ? 
On whom could the so-called National Church unctu- 
ously enjoin contentment with the condition of life 
wherein it has pleased God to place them, were there no 
serfs of the soil among her presumed adherents ? 

Indeed, for man}^ generations the combination of 
powers spiritual and temporal against the English agri- 
cultural laborer has been so irresistible, that the marvel 
is he has the smallest manhood left. Reform after re- 
form has passed him by unheeded, or rather has in- 
creased the distance between him and other classes of 
the community. The Protestant Reformation deprived 
him of the charities of the monasteries, and in their 
place piit in force poor laws of unexampled barbarity. 
It found him sunk in ignorance, and it kept him so. In 
time reform bills came ; but who should bestow fran- 
chises on a being so abject? Free trade gave a new 
impetus to British commerce ; but, let the economists 
explain it as best they maj^, the Manchester cornuco- 
pia never poured any of its abundance into Hodge's 
lap. He was seemingly bej^ond the beneficent opera- 



194 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

tion even of economic laws. For five and twenty years 
he had, with more or less variation, been going from bad 
to worse. So much indeed was this the case, that the 
opening of 1872 found the actual tillers of English soil 
in a state of " depression" bordering on actual famine. 
Then it was that the Agricultural Laborers' Union took 
root, and Mr. Joseph Arch first became known to the 
public as the Moses who had been raised up to lead his 
down-trodden brethren out of the house of bondage. 
Like his prototype, he might have gone over to the 
oppressor, much to his own advantage, in the capacity 
of land steward to a local Pharaoh ; but he had resisted 
the temptation, and, when the hour struck, the man was 
ready. 

Joseph Arch, founder and president of the Agricul- 
tural Laborers' Union, was born in November, 1826, at 
Barf or d, — a beautiful village, of some eight hundred 
souls, about three miles from the historic town of War- 
wick. All about are stately mansions of the great, 
and Shakespeare' s Avon winds close by through lovely 
meadows studded with majestic trees. Like himself, 
Arch's father and grandfather were industrious, ill-re- 
quited hewers of wood and drawers of water. How- 
beit, — 

" Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys and destiny obscure; 
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 

The short and simple annals of the poor." 

The life-story of Mr. Arch's father is short enough, 
and sad enough. Unlike his son, he was a man of 
peace, disposed in all things to conform to the behests 
of the powers that be ; but he ' ' drew the line some- 
where," and not to his advantage. He was sufficiently 



JOSEPH ARCH. 195 

ill-advised to refuse to sign a petition in favor of the 
corn laws, and so became by one rash act a " marked 
man," on whom "quality" never after smiled. For 
more than fift}^ jesus he toiled ; and, when at last he was 
no longer able to drag his weary limbs to the fields, he 
took to bed, and sorrowfully turned his face to the wall. 
The savings of a lifetime of painful industry and fru- 
gality amounted to four shillings and sixpence ! The 
denoument I cannot better describe than in the words 
of the Rev. Mr. Attenborough, whose faithful sketch 
of Mr. Arch I cordially recommend to those who may 
wish further information regarding the origin of the 
National Agricultural Laborers' Union, and the early 
career of its founder : — 

"The worn, crumbling Arch, just tumbling down, 
was to be propped up with ' good support,' and there 
was four shillings and sixpence towards providing it. 
' Give him some beef- tea, get him a drop of good wine 
if you can, and take this prescription to the chemist's." 
The poor patient's friends sat wondering, and weighing 
his four and sixpence against the doctor' s counsel : it 
was nowhere. The old man wept, knowing he was, 
after all his work, to become a burden to those he 
loved, and who, as he knew, had barely enough for 
themselves. ' I be afeared, Joe, the parish will give 
thee nothin' for me, be'n as yer a Dissenter.' Joe was 
not anxious they should : but Joe' s wife had been in the 
habit of earning a couple of shillings a week at char- 
ing ; and, now that the old man wanted nursing, she had 
to give this up, and stop at home. To the guardians 
Arch made a reasonable offer. ' Gentlemen, I don't 
want you to support my aged father ; but if you will 
give my wife one" shilling and sixpence towards nursing 



196 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

liiin, now that she is cut off her charing, I shall be 
much obliged to you. It isn't much ; it's less than the 
loss of my wife's earnings, and nothing towards the 
expense.' — ' Certainly not, Arch : yoiu" father can go 
to "the house," and you must pay one and sixpence 
towards his support.' — ' Good morning, gentlemen. 
I'd sooner rot under a hedge than he should go there.' 
The old man lingered for ten months ; and, during the 
last few weeks of his life, the parish, against Arch's 
will, but with the consent of his wife, allowed him one 
shilling and sixpence and a loaf ! Then he died ; and 
his son bought him a coffin, and hid him down in the 
earth, on whose broad, bountiful breast there seemed to 
be no room for him. Fifty 3^ears a worker, thirt}^ j^ears 
a ratepayer, a life's saving of four shillings and six- 
pence, a choice between the workhouse and his son's 
poor cottage, eighteenpence and a loaf for two months, 
— this was the life-story of Arch, senior !" 

Nor was this in ante-union da}' s an isolated instance 
of hardship. On the contrary, so far from being the 
exception, it was the rule. Work as hard and live as 
sparingly as one might, the inevitable goal was the 
workhouse. Wages would admit of no- other result ; 
and this in Christian Jingo England, with its ' ' miracu- 
lous Premier ' ' and its capacity for undertaking unlim- 
ited campaigns ! The thought burns like a hot iron, 
and the warning word ' ' Beware ! ' ' rises to indignant 
lips, — 

'' Lest, when our latest hope is fled, 
Ye taste of our despair, 
And learn by proof in some wild hour 
How much the wretched dare." 

It was not from his father, but from his mother, that 



JOSEPH ARCH. 197 

Mr. Arch inherited his moral stamina. She was a wo- 
man of well-defined views in religion and politics, lean- 
ing strongly towards Nonconformity and Radicalism. 
She could both read and write, — rare accomplishments 
for one in her lowly station of life ; and, before her boy 
was six years of age, he could, thanks to her tuition, do 
likewise. 

Thereupon he was sent to the village school, where 
he remained for two years and three-quarters ; and then 
his education was pronounced complete. Money was 
wanted above all things in the Arch household ; and at 
the ripe age of eight years and three-quarters young 
Arch commenced to earn his livelihood as a bird-scarer 
or " crow-kepper,'* with wages at the rate of fourpence 
per diem. In South Warwickshire the living scare- 
crows are dressed as nearly as possible like the more 
common inanimate objects with which farmers are wont 
to adorn their potato-fields. They are supposed to be 
more eff'ective than the voiceless stationary " keppers," 
inasmuch as from dawn till eve they move from field to 
field, emitting all manner of strange and alarming 
sounds. Their garb is, however, so grotesque, that the 
birds, it is hinted, draw near for the purpose of laugh- 
ing at them ; and so the provident husbandman's lauda- 
ble aim is frustrated. 

At ten years of age Joseph was considered ripe for 
the more responsible occupation of plough-driving. All 
day long the poor lad would trail his heavily clogged 
boots by the side of the horse, to whose gearing he 
would occasionally have to cling from sheer exhaustion. 
Thereupon the furrow would bulge, and the incensed 
ploughman, dexterously hurling at him a great clod, 
would lay him prone, face downwards, on the just up- 
turned soil. 



198 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PABLTAMENT. 

Nor did material hardships constitute his sorest trials. 
As he grew older, and entered on his " teens," he was 
promoted to drive a team in harvest-time, and felt him- 
self every inch a man. His employer, thoughtlessly 
taking advantage of his youthful elation of spirits, plied 
him with excessive quantities of liquor ; and, but for the 
peremptory steps taken by Mrs. Arch to keep her bo}^ 
in the strait path of sobriety, the apostolate of the 
agricultural laborers might have been rendered forever 
impossible in the person of Joseph Arch. In his six- 
teenth 3^ear this kind, judicious mother was no more ; 
but her admonitions were indelibly impressed on her 
son's mind. To his mother Arch ascribes whatever 
good he has been able to achieve. At twenty years of 
age Arch's character was no longer to form. He was 
a local preacher, and earning the highest wages to be 
made as an agricultural laborer; viz., eleven shillings 
a week. Several eligible opportunities occurred for 
bettering his condition ; but he resolved, instead, to 
" stand by the old man." 

Shortly after, he married the daughter of a local arti- 
san, — a woman of great natural endowments both of 
head and heart. Though uneducated, technically 
speaking, she is perhaps superior to her husband as a 
speculative politician. At every step she has stimulated 
his zeal b}^ steady devotion to great principles, — greater, 
perhaps, than it would naturally occur to him to advo- 
cate. In due course two children were born to them, 
and Arch' s wages unhappily fell to nine shillings a week. 
Four persons to maintain at the rate of say fourpence 
per head per diem ! The thing, Mrs. Arch declared, 
could not be done ; and so she took a bold step. She 
partially returned to her ante-nuptial employment, while 



JOSEPH ABCH. 199 

her husband took up his tools, and scoured the country 
in quest of more remunerative work than was to be had 
in the neighborhood of Barford. For months he never 
crossed his own threshold. In his wanderings he 
encountered poverty beside which even the Barford 
standard was one of comparative plenty. In Hereford- 
shu-e he found able-bodied men with wives and families 
toiling from morning till night for seven shillings a 
week. With one of these he once lodged. How the 
wife and children subsisted Arch could never ascertain ; 
but the husband fared thus : " Breakfast, a dry crust ; 
dinner, ditto ; supper, — the great meal of the day, — 
sometunes ' scald-chops,' a dainty dish consisting of 
broken bread moistened by pouring hot water upon it, 
and sometimes a pint of cider warmed over the fire and 
a crust dipped into it. This from Monday till Satur- 
day, and on Sunday occasio7ially a bit of bacon." He 
beheld the tears of the oppressed, and they had no 
comforter ; and he vowed in the bitterness of his heart, 
that, if ever an opportunity should present itself, he 
would try to be that comforter. The clock struck sooner 
than he expected. Presently he was enabled to return 
to Barford to undertake "jobs" which required the 
assistance of other " hands." As an employer he was 
not merely considerate, but generous. His own special- 
ty as an agricultural laborer is hedge-cutting : he is the 
champion hedge-cutter of all England. 

All his life Mr. Arch has been addicted to reading. 
His earlier studies were chiefly of a pietistic character : 
he devoured the Bible, the " Pilgrim's Progress," Pike's 
" Early Piety," " Pearson on Infidelity," et hoc genus 
omne. He still preaches to vast audiences, generally 
twice and sometimes three times on Sundays. Origi- 



200 EMINENT LIBEKALS OUT OE PARLIAMENT. 

nally a Primitive Methodist, he has latterly laid aside the 
shibboleths of sect altogether, and taken his stand on 
the common ground of Christ's humanitarian precepts, 
and the example of his spotless, self-sacrificing life. 
His experience as a local preacher in addressing large 
audiences is to a great extent the secret of his success 
as a political agitator. 

The National Agricultural Laborers' Union was start- 
ed in this wise : " On the 5th of July, 1872," — I quote 
Mr. Arch' s own unvarnished narrative of ' ' The Rise 
and Progress of the National Agricultural Laborers' 
Union," — "two farm-laborers, named Henry Perks 
and John Davis, were sent by their fellow- laborers from 
Wellesbourne, in Warwickshke, to the village of Bar- 
ford. The object of the deputation was to wait upon 
me to ask me to help them to form a union. . . . Fortu- 
nately I was at home when they arrived. I went inside 
to see the men, who said, ' We are come over to see 
you about our having a union. We formed a bit of one 
under the hedge the other day ; but we can' t go on very 
well without some one to put us right. The men are 
all ready for it, and we appeal to you.' — ' But,' I 
said, ' do you mean to stick together? ' — ' Yes,' was 
the reply. ' Well, now,' said I, ' jou go back and 
get some of the best men in Wellesbourne, and ask Mrs. 
Baker to let you have the club-room ; and I will be over 
on Wednesday night at seven o'clock. But, remember, 
3^ou must be prepared for conflict, as the farmers will be 
sure to oppose 3^ou.' The leplj was, ' You come : it 
can't be worse for us than it is.' " Thus simply was 
the " Revolt of the Field," the most remarkable social 
upheaval of the day, commenced. The news spread like 
wildfire, and on the Wednesday night Mr. Arch ad- 



JOSEPH ARCH. 



201 



dressed over a thousand fellow-laborers under a great 
chestnut-tree at Wellesbourne. Meetmg followed meet- 
ing in rapid succession. Arch was ubiquitous and 
untiring ; and at last, at a memorable meeting at Leam- 
ington, the National Union was formed, with Joseph 
Arch as chakman, assisted by an executive committee 
of twelve laborers and an influential consultative coun- 
cil, comprising Professor Beesly, Mr. Jesse CoUings, 
Mr. J. C. Cox, Mr. Ashton Dilke, the Hon. Auberon 
Herbert, Mr. E. Jenkins, and others. 

The moderation of the demands of the union was no 
less remarkable than the violence of the opposition 
offered by landlords, parsons, and farmers. Bishops 
menacingly alluded to ' ' horseponds " as fitting recep- 
tacles for agitators. Then foUowed the memorable 
Chipping Norton prosecution and conviction of labor- 
ers' wives, and the important trial at Faringdon to test 
the right of public meeting, where Sir James Fitzjames 
Stephen and Mr. Jenkins held a brief for the union 
with such signal success. But it is not my business to 
write a history of the National Agricultural Laborers' 
Union. Suffice it to say that in most instances the 
immediate object of the union has been attained. 
Wherever the men have stood manfully by the union, 
wages have gone up, agricultural depression notwith- 
standing, from fifteen to twenty per cent. In South 
Warwickshke wages, which in 1872 stood at from 
$2.40 to $2.88, now range from $3.12 to $3.60 a week. 
Within the executive of the National Agricultural 
Laborers' Union, harmony, I regret to say, has not 
uniformly prevailed. The urban unionists, who have 
exerted themselves, I believe, with perfect disinterest- 
edness for the emancipation of the agricultural laborer, 



202 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

have never regarded Mr. Arch's lead with much confi- 
dence, and the latter has not failed to reciprocate this 
sentiment of distrust. The reason, I think, is that Mr. 
Arch is a thorough agricultural laborer, with all the 
vhtues and some of the faihngs of his class. He has 
seen so little real generosity exhibited towards the serfs 
of the soil, that he is somewhat over- suspicious on their 
account. He fears the Greeks, even when they bring 
gifts to his clients ; and this attitude, I am bound to 
sa}^, has not always been without justification. It served 
him notably in Canada when he came to negotiate with 
the unscrupulous ring of emigration crunps who, in the 
fall of 1873, formed the Macdonald Cabinet. Canada 
is, in truth, a country where it is difficult to say whether 
the rigor of the climate or the corruption of the Govern- 
ment is the more unendurable. If he had listened to 
the warbling of the official sirens, and deported large 
numbers of English laborers to the inclement shores of 
Canada, it would have been enough to wreck the union 
forever. 

Mr. Arch's sojourn in the United States was less 
satisfactory. The New York working-men, intending 
nothing uncomplimentary, had advertised him to speak 
at the Cooper Institute without his consent, — more 
Americano. He declined with quite unnecessary blunt- 
ness. He did not proceed far enough west ; for there, 
if an^^where, is it possible to find the promised land 
of the English agricultural laborer. On a futm^e tour of 
inspection it is to be hoped he wiU repah so great an 
oversight, inasmuch as it is prett}'' certain that emigi'a- 
tion has all along been the sheet-anchor of the union. 
Under the auspices of the National Agricultural Labor- 
ers' Union, and partly aided by its funds, some seven 



JOSEPH ARCH. 203 

hundred thousand souls have left our shores, or migrated 
from country to town, since 1872. At that time mem- 
bers could with difficulty pay three cents a week to the 
union ; now the subscription is five cents, and there is 
still a solid phalanx of twenty-five thousand subscribers. 
But the good work is hardly begun. The laborer has 
to obtain the franchise, and the land has to be com- 
pletely defeudalized before Mr. Arch' s mission will have 
been fulfilled. I have never met a man who, from per- 
sonal observation, has grasped so comprehensively the 
evils of our land monopoly. In his own neighborhood 
Mr. Arch is an encyclopaedia of information regarding 
the past and present produce of the various adjacent 
estates. Within the last twenty-five years, cattle and 
sheep, he will tell you, have in most cases decreased by 
more than one-half, without a single rood of pasture- 
land being broken up. Instead of "three profits," 
there will hardly be enough for one if the present sys- 
tem is to obtain much longer. Feudalism is eating 
itself up in England.' These be truths which no one 
could inculcate with greater authority at St. Stephen's, 
whither it is a cause for profound regret he was not 
sent, at the last general election, by the borough of 
Wilton to explain his view of the " three profits,' ' and 
who ought to reap them. 



IV. 

EDWAED SPENCER BEESLY. 

" Thou, Humanity, art my goddess: to thy law 
My services are bound; wherefore should I 
Stand in the plague of custom ? " 

LAST issue, in writing of Mr. Joseph Arch, I ran 
no inconsiderable risk of losing sight of the man 
in the magnitude of the cause with which his name is 
identified. This week I am in similar and greater 
peril ; for, if it be one thing to face National Agricul- 
tural Unionism as the subject-matter of Eadical effort, 
it is quite another to tackle the whole dutj^ of man — 
the religion of humanit}" — as revealed in the fulness 
of these later times b}^ Auguste Comte. 

To those who know anj^ thing of the writings of that 
extraordinar}' man, I need sc^rcel}^ say, that, whatever 
may be thought of his ulterior conclusions, his was one 
of the most powerful, laborious, and all-embracing 
intellects of an}' tune or clime. If one cannot accept 
his ideas, it is still necessary to revise one's own in the 
light of them ; for, as Moses was fitted for his mission 
b}^ being learned in all the learning of the Egj'ptians, 
so assuredl}^ Auguste Comte was superlativelj' conver- 
sant with all modern sciences, — with astronomy, phj^s- 
ics, chemistrj'', biology ; and, being so conversant, he 
made, some sixtj^ 3'ears ago now, a notable discovery. 

204 



EDWAED SPENCER BEESLY. 205 

He found that each of these sciences had in the course 
of its development passed through three stages, — a 
theological, a metaphysical, and a positive. Take, for 
example, life in man and brute : what is it? The an- 
swer of primitive man — the theological answer — is, 
God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and 
they became living creatures. Then came the meta- 
physical explanation : they live because their blood is 
pervaded b}^ a mysterious sublimated essence called 
"vital spirits,' ' or " physiological units." Then at last 
the question loliy they live is given up as hopeless ; and 
it is only asked how they live, and by what means the 
conditions of life can be modified for their profit or 
loss. This is the last or positive stage which is ulti- 
mately reached in every science. 

From 1822 to 1842 Comte was busily engaged in 
verifying the above profound generalization in detail. 
Heureka ! He had found a master-key to the whole 
history of mankind, religious, philosophical, moral, and 
political. The foundations of a true science of soci- 
ology might at last be confidently laid. The gods and 
the metaphysicians might now be safel}^, nay, advan- 
tageously^, bowed out of the great Temple of Humanit}', 
in appropriate niches of which should be placed such 
miscellaneous benefactors of the race as Moses, Christ, 
Mohammed, the Buddha, St. Thomas Aquinas ; Plato, 
Socrates, ^schylus, Confucius, Shakespeare, Dante ; 
Thales, Archimedes, Newton, Kepler ; Ariosto, Cer- 
vantes, Moliere ; Julius Caesar, Trajan, Danton, and 
a great company of other prophets, who, in their day 
and generation, had worked hard in the sacred cause 
of Humanity, without, of course, apprehending very 
clearly what they w;ere about. Some of them, no 



206 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

doubt, had concerned themselves much about super- 
naturalities, immortalities, and such like childish things, 
according as they were in the theological or metaphysi- 
cal stage ; but they had all agreed in this, " to live not 
for themselves, but for others." 

Here then, is the "Open sesame" of the future. 
The pillars which support the great fane of Humanity 
are three, — Affection, Order, Progress : the first repre- 
senting the principle ; the second, the basis ; the third, 
the end of the new creed. And whosoever builds on 
any other foundation, let him be anathema maranatlia. 
Not quite so strong as that, perhaps, but still not far 
from it ; for good Comtists attribute the sum of politi- 
cal strifes and social miseries to the conflict which neces- 
sarily arises from the fact that large masses of man- 
kind are some of them still in the theological, some in 
the metaphj^sical, and only an elect few in the i^ositive, 
stage of belief. Until all have been brought into the 
positive fold, wars and rumors of wars are inevitable. 
Lilve other millenniums, alas ! that of the positivists 
has been postponed sine die, and to a necessarily dis- 
tant day too. 

I should be sony indeed if any one were to suppose 
that the above is other than the faintest outline of the 
creed of which the learned professor of history in Uni- 
versity College, London, is so devoted and fearless an 
exponent. It cost him ten j^ears' patient study to 
attain to settled convictions on the subject, and even 
yet he is not in the priesthood of positivism. He is 
only a sort of lay deacon, or stalworth doorkeeper, at 
the Temple of Humanity. This being so, I feel that it 
is not a little presumptuous in me, who haA^e given but 
little attention to this new and most difficult of cults. 



EDWAED SPENCEE BEESLY. 207 

to attempt in any way to pass judgment on it ; and, 
were it not that Mr. Beesly's political conduct and 
historical writings have been so directly inspired by 
Comtism, I should most willingly give it a wide berth. 
There is so much that is admirable, and so many things 
at the same time that traverse one's most cherished 
opinions, — prejudices, a Comtist would doubtless say, 
— in the system of Comte, that it becomes a matter of 
no ordinary difficulty to review Mr. Beesly's career, 
sunple as have been the incidents, with impartiality and 
discrunination. 

Edward Spencer Beesly was born at Feckenham, 
Worcestershu-e, in Januar}^, 1831. His father was vicar 
of the place, — a sincere, sober-minded evangelical of 
the old school, who kept up intimate relations with the 
leaders of his own part}?' in the Church, and with few 
others. His son Edward he found leisure to educate 
at home till the 3^oung man was of age to be entered as 
a student at nowise illustrious " Wadham," Oxford. 
This home training may in some measure account for 
the fact that the Englishman who in public life . has 
most frequently and audaciously made light of the 
tenderest susceptibilities of all manner of reputable 
people "with gigs," is in the bosom of his famil}^ a 
model of gentleness and every domestic virtue. At 
Wadham College Mr. Beesly was lucky in his friend- 
ships, having for tutor Mr. Congreve (then the Rev. 
Eichard) , and for fellow-students Mr. Frederic Harri- 
son and Mr. J. H. Bridges. Congreve was a man of 
admitted abilitj?-, — one of the most accomplished Aris- 
totelians of his day. Sincere but eccentric, no one 
was very much astonished when, one fine morning, it 
was rumored in Oxford that he had been formally ad- 



208 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

mitted into the church of Auguste Comte. In time he 
was followed by Beesly, Harrison, and Bridges ; Bees- 
1}^ as I have said, taking ten years to acquaint himself 
with the evangel of the Parisian before relinquishing 
that of the Nazarene. In 1854 Mr. Beesly graduated 
with honors, and was appointed an assistant master in 
Marlborough College. Subsequently he sought for 
and obtained the position of principal of Universit}^ 
Hall, Gordon Square, London, in succession to Dr. 
Carpenter, who had been preceded by Mr. Hutton, now 
of " The Spectator," by the gifted Arthur Clough, and 
nominally by F. W. Newman, the first principal desig- 
nate who had never acted. The hall is tenanted by 
students of all religious denominations, and no prose- 
lytizing is permitted. There is a complete pax ecde- 
siastica maintained at University Hall, almost unknown 
in similar institutions. In 1860 Mr. Beesly was ap- 
pointed professor of history in University College, — an 
office the duties of which he was peculiarly fitted both 
by predilection and training to discharge. 

The professor in his class-room is always interesting. 
He is unconventional without being familiar, and he 
has a happy knack of presenting the purely human 
aspect of his subject, however far it may appear to be 
removed from the domain of current interests, which 
seldom fails to leave the desired impression. The 
Comtian principle of the continuity of human life 
enables Mr. Beesly to irradiate the darkness of the 
past by the light of the present with no ordinar}^ suc- 
cess. T]ie last time I was in his class-room (the class 
is a mixed one of young ladies and gentlemen, the 
propriety of whose behavior is a standing disproof of 
the fears of timid moralists), he was comparing the 



I 



EDWARD SPENCEE BEESLY. 209 

cardinal features of the religion of ancient Rome with 
those more particularly of Christianity. The great 
goddess of the Romans was really Roma, the " abstract 
double" of the Eternal City. There was one Rome 
built by the hands of many generations of Romans, and 
another built up by the imaginations of many genera- 
tions of Quirites. This process of creating a divinity 
after their own image did not shock the Roman people. 
They were in the theological stage of development. 
Well, it struck me very forcibly that this delusive 
object of Roman worship was hardty less an imposture 
than the object of Comtist veneration, — the Being of 
Humanity. The Being of Humanity is the thinly dis- 
guised "abstract double" of an indefinite number of 
men and women, past, present, and to come, " mostly 
fools," with a considerable infusion of knaves. I, for 
one, absolutely refuse to worship at the shrine of such 
a Mumbo Jumbo. Having been once brought out of 
the theological wilderness by a process so painful, I 
positive^ decline to be again led back into it by a 
shabbier road than I entered it. 

Of course I shall be told that I do not understand the 
Comtist religion, or perhaps that I am incapable of un- 
derstanding it ; for, like all possessors of absolute truths, 
Comtists have a short waj^ with unbelievers. My only 
consolation is, — and I admit it is a poor one, — I am 
still in a majority in this country. I do not forget, for 
example, that Christianity was once in a minority of 
one ; and, if the avowed English co-religionists of Mr. 
Beesly number only some sixty or seventy souls at 
present, I am free to grant that thej have among them 
proportionally by far the best brains in England. And 
they are diligent in season and out of season, — zealous 



210 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

in every good work, as they understand good works. 
Mr. Beesly's labors in connection, for example, with 
the translation of Comte' s ' ' Politique Positive ' ' into 
English, are enough to make any member of the com- 
pany of biblical revisers blush for very shame. He 
is likewise a frequent contributor to the columns of 
"La Revue Occidentale," the organ of {he orthodox 
positivists, conducted by the primate of the body, 
Pierre Laffitte, — a personal disciple of Comte. 

It may be necessary to explain how it comes to pass 
that Mr. Beesly is an orthodox, and not a heterodox, 
positivist. The seamless coat of Comte has, alas ! 
alread}^ been rent. Dr. Congreve has disavowed the 
headship of Laffitte, and so has become schismatic, 
taking half of the Comtist Church in England and its 
dependencies with him. He has turned his back on 
Paris, as Henry VIII. turned his back on Pome. He 
has set up an independent island Church, and may be 
regarded as a sort of Comtist Protestant. On the other 
hand, Mr. Beesly, Dr. Bridges, Mr. Harrison, Mr. Ver- 
non Lushington, Mr. Cotter Morison, and others still 
remain Ultramontanes, repairing from time to time to 
Paris to engage in the solemnities which annually take 
place at Comte 's old abode on the anniversary of his 
death. The house is kept exactly as when the founder 
of the new religion died, and is the sacred rendezvous, 
the kaaba, of the faithful. The meeting-place of the 
orthodox is the Cavendish Rooms, Mortimer Street, 
Langham Place, where a course of lectures of an expo- 
sitional character are delivered on Sunday evenings 
during the winter months by Mr. Beesly, Mr. Harrison, 
and other qualified laymen. 

It remains to glance at some of Mr. Beesly's political 



EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY. 211 

opinions, acts, and historical writings, whicli are one 
and all penetrated tlirough and through by the princi- 
ples and spirit of his master, Comte. Thej^ have all 
for their central idea or governing principle the far- 
reaching Comtian dictum, " The working-class is not, 
properly speaking, a class at all, but constitutes the 
body of society. From it proceed the various special 
classes which we regard as organs necessary to that 
body." Woe to the aforesaid special classes if they 
cease to be necessary organs ! Woe to Mr. Gladstone, 
woe to Earl Beaconsfield, woe to Parliament, woe to all 
men who are unduly friendly to special classes ! Let 
them but show their baneful partiality, and the professor 
will smite them with remorseless impartiality. To him 
the Trojan Whig and the Tyrian Tory have ever been 
much alike. Nay, he has even been known to speak 
disrespectfully of parliamentary institutions themselves, 
as Sydney Smith said Lord Jeffrey once spoke depre- 
ciatingly of the equator. He has scoffed at the respec- 
tability of our middle class, and treated our greatest 
plutocrats as if they were nobodies. In all things he 
is pre-eminently un-English, affirming, as he does, the 
immense superiority of Frenchmen and French institu- 
tions over Englishmen and English institutions. Eng- 
land' s function among the nations is merely to play the 
part of the " horrible example." She will do nothing 
at home that is not base and h}^30critical ; nothing 
abroad that is not tyrannical and suicidal. The cup of 
her iniquities is almost full to overflowing. 

Mr. Beesly would give up India to-morrow, to say 
nothing, of course, of Afghanistan. He would make 
an ample apology to Cetewayo, and replace him on the 
throne of Zululand. He would surrender Gibraltar to 



212 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

Spain, and make a present of Ireland to Mr. Parnell or 
to anybody else who might care to take it off our hands. 
He would concentrate all our military and naval strength 
in and around Great Britain ; and, having thus fortified 
the island by lopping off its rotten outlying members, 
the country would be in a position to enter on the dis- 
charge of international duties meet for civilization, 
conformable to the religion of humanity. England, 
along with France, would then be in a position to pro- 
tect free Denmark, free Holland, free Belgium, from 
German or other autocratic aggression ; and, as oppor- 
tunity occurred, a blow for the resuscitation of Poland 
might perchance be struck. The neo-imperialists, at 
all events, can hardl}^ be expected to regard this as 
the ' ' voice of sense and truth ; ' ' but it is unques- 
tionabty positive politics as understood by Auguste 
Comte, and his disciple is not the man to shrink from 
any of the consequences of his master's teaching. 

With respect to only one point in this programme do 
I care meantime to pronounce an opinion. The Com- 
tists have never ceased to protest against our conquests 
in Hindostan, and our opium wars with China. Mr. 
Beesly in particular has lifted up his voice against 
these cold-blooded enterprises, which fill the mind of 
every sagacious observer with the gloomiest forebod- 
ings, with an energy that does him the greatest credit. 
It is one of the saving graces of the Comtist creed that 
it includes the most abject sons of men in the adorable 
Being of Humanity. They may be in the backward 
metaphysical state, like the Hindoos, or in the jet 
more unredeemed theological condition of the Zulus ; 
but they are not, therefore, fit subjects for Christian 
oppression. They are where the most civilized peoples 



EDWARD SPENCER BEESLY. 213 

once were, struggling weary and footsore along the 
dusty highway of human progress, which all must tread. 
If they fall among thieves, it is ours to play the part 
of the good Samaritan, and lift them out of the ditch 
into which the footpads have cast them. But we, alas ! 
are the footpads. I shall not speedily forget the right- 
eous indignation with which Mr. Beesly recently spoke 
to me of the Zulu war. He felt the misdeeds of our 
representatives as a stain on his personal honor. The 
name of Frere, even more than that of Eyre, ought to 
go down with infamy to the latest posterity. 

The mentioning of Eyre recalls to my mind an inci- 
dent in Mr. Beesly' s career which brought down on his 
head an extraordinary torrent of journalistic and other 
invective. At a public meeting held in connection 
with the Broadhead murders in 1867, he somewhat 
infelicitously observed that Ej-re ' ' had committed his 
crime in the interest of employers, just as Broadhead 
had committed his crime in the interest of workmen." 
The wealthy class, he argued, had approved, while the 
working-class had condemned, murder. This was 
enough : he was declared to have ' ' apologized ' ' for 
Broadhead' s crimes, and even to have converted him 
"into a hero." So far was this from being the fact, 
that it was subsequently proved that Mr. Beesly had, 
on the first intimation of the atrocities, gone out of his 
way to urge the unions to ' ' ferret out any member 
guilty of a breach of the law, and drag him to justice." 
This was, however, not enough. A victim was wanted, 
and for a time the vials of class calumny continued to 
be poured out on the professor's devoted head. Had 
he been a weak man, he would have succumbed to the 
violence of the storm. As it was, he stood erect and 



214 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

immovable as a pillar, and the tempest gradually died 
away. 

But the Broadhead incident was by no means Pro- 
fessor' s Beesly' s first offence against society. On the 
twenty-eighth day of September, 1864, he had actually 
presided at the first meeting of " the International," in 
a room of St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre. There Tolain 
submitted his memorable project, and Marx, Eccarius, 
Odger, Lu craft. Llama, and Wolff were named as a 
provisional committee. Here at least was one highly 
educated English gentleman with the courage of his 
opinions, whom no political Mrs. Grundy could intimi- 
date. In 1875 occurred the iniquitous conviction of 
the five cabinet-makers — Read, Weiler, Ham, Hibbert, 
and Matthews — for the offence of picketing. Again 
Mr, Beesly came boldly to the front. During the term 
of their imprisonment he lectured at the Eleusis Club 
on their behalf. When they were released, he was 
among the first to welcome them at the prison-door ; 
and he presided at the complimentary dinner at which 
they were subsequently entertained, supported by the 
Hon. L. Stanley, Mr. John Morley, Dr. Congreve, Mr. 
Ashton Dilke, Professor Hunter, and others. 

In March, 1877, died George Odger, the Epaminon- 
das of English politicians. He was interred in the 
Brompton Cemetery ; and, from a broken column near 
his grave. Professor Beesty pronounced a befitting eulo- 
gium on his career in presence rather than in the hear- 
ing of a countless multitude. "George Odger," he 
said, "was not only a good, but a great citizen, — one 
who put his public in the first rank of duties, and was 
prepared to sacrifice all private interests to that consid- 
eration," — a meed of praise not less deserved by the 



EDWABD SPENCEE BEESLY. 215 

eulogized dead than by the living eulogist. There is 
not, I am sure, a more inflexibly honest politician or 
cultivated gentleman in England than Professor Beesly. 
But I am bound to say that I think many of his po- 
litical conceptions are mistaken. Like all Comtists, his 
admiration for France is excessive, and he dangerously 
undervalues the importance of parliamentary govern- 
ment. I acknowledge with gratitude the immense sac- 
rifices which the French people have made in the cause 
of human emancipation. France is pre-eminently 

" The poet of the nations, 
That dreams on and wails on 
While the household goes to wreck." 

All the same I cannot conceive with Mr. Beesly that 
English workmen, as such, have any very vital stake in 
the evolution of the social and political life of France. 
If they cannot, with the aid of the less selfish and more 
intelligent section bf the middle class, combine in then* 
own way to establish on the ruins of monarchy and 
aristocracy in England a stable republic, not based on 
birth and privilege, but on merit and equal rights, then 
let them throw up the sponge once and for all, and, 
betaking themselves, not in then- thousands, but their 
millions, to the free, open-armed United States of 
America, leave behind them a solitude wherein their 
oppressors may meditate at their leisure on the con- 
sequences of their own selfishness and folly. 

A word or two on Mr. Beesty' s vigorous vindication 
of Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius, and I am done. 
To him these besmirched historic personages are stand- 
ard-bearers of the Roman Revolution, the lineal de- 
scendants of the illustrious Gracchi and of Drusus. 



216 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELTAMENT. 

According to this view, Cato and Cicero, Brutus and 
Cassius, were the Beaconsfields and Salisburj^s, while 
the Catilines and the Clodii were the Dilkes and Cham- 
berlains of the time. The cause of the latter triumphed 
eventually when Julius Caesar crushed the Senate and 
became the saviour of society, —the great world-proto- 
t3'pe of personal rulers. In a sense the advent of Ro- 
man imperialism was a popular gain. It replaced 
many t3'rants by one. But it gave the death-blow to 
whatever little public spirit remained, in Rome, and 
that calamity was irreparable. I grant the republican 
oligarchy was largely corrupt and oppressive. Unhap- 
pily, it never occurred to any one to renovate the 
Roman legislative assemblies b}^ the admission of rep- 
resentatives from the provincial communes. Repre- 
sentative government as now understood was the dis- 
covery of a later age. As it was, Cato and Cicero, 
Brutus and Cassius, saw the image of constitutional 
freedom receding day by day, and they clung desper- 
ately to her skirts. In such evil times Radicals became 
Conservatives, and Conservatives ostensible Radicals. 
Mr. Beesly seems to me to forget that even a hateful 
middle class may be crushed at too great a cost. Like 
all Comtists, he is too partial to able men placed in 
authority by brute masses. For my part, had I lived 
in the days of Brutus and Cassius, I am certain that I 
should have been among the republican legionaries who 
were cut to pieces at Philippi, just as I should have 
been at the coup d' etat, or as I should be if ever M. 
Gambetta, for example, were to show symptoms of fol- 
lowing in the footprints of Napoleon. 



E 



V. 

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON. 

*' God forgive me if ever I 
Take aught from the Book of that Prophecy, 
Lest my part, too, should be taken away 
From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day! " 

^ROM Professor Beesly's Comtism to the Rev. 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon' s Christianity, what a dis- 
tance to travel ! Mr. Beesly once somewhat uncharitably 
accused Mr. Gladstone of being more concerned about 
his "contemptible superstitions than about politics." 
What would he not say of the views of the pastor of 
the Metropolitan Tabernacle? You might search the 
whole world and find no one whose mind was more 
thoroughly under the domination of theological ideas 
than Spurgeon' s. To a positivist the reverend gentle- 
man must appear like a survival, not of the fittest, but 
of the unfittest, — a painful anachronism to remind 
good positivists and advanced thinkers generally of the 
lowly estate from which they have emerged. Not even 
reached the metaphysical stage ; and yet Mr. Spurgeon 
has thousands and thousands of excellent men and 
women who hang on his every word, spoken and writ- 
ten, as if it were the very bread of life. 

With hardly an attempt at direct political propa- 
gandism, Mr. Spurgeon contrives to be the greatest 

217 



218 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 



single influence in South London in favor of Liberalism. 
At elections, school board and parliamentary, his fol- 
lowers display an energ}^ and discipline which leave 
nothing to be desired. They are men of faith, who do 
not lose heart in times of adversity and re-action. 
Their human s^^mpathies, as well as their spiritual, 
have been warmed by the flame which burns in the 
bosom of the devout and fearless Great Heart of the 
Metropolitan Tabernacle. 

If the common characteristic of men of progress, of 
genuine Radicals, be that they "live not for them- 
selves but for others," then it would be hard to find a 
better Radical than Mr. Spurgeon. As his Divine 
Master went about doing good, so has His disciple 
ever struggled hard to follow in His footsteps. So 
much I readily gTant. My heart is entirely with this 
pure-minded, unsophisticated believer ; but my unsancti- 
fied head will not, alas ! follow it. I go to the Taber- 
nacle, and I admire the vastness of the audience, the 
simple unconventional eloquence of the preacher, the 
pith and mother-wit of many of his sayings ; but, on 
the whole, the phraseology, if not strange, is almost 
meaningless to me, and I return to my place about as 
little edified as if the good man had been talking in 
some dead language to which I had no key. Instead 
of attracting me, his familiarity with the Almighty and 
His waj'S repels me. He is more intimate with Hi7n 
than I am with my dearest friend. Is this the unre- 
deemed condition of the theologically-minded spoken 
of by the Prophet Comte? I ask m^^self ; or what is 
it? — 

" It is growing dark! . . . 
I come again to the name of the Lord ! 



CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON. 219 

Ere I that awful name record, 
That is spoken so lightly among men, 
Let me pause a while and wash my pen: 
Pure from blemish and blot must it be 
When it writes that word of mystery." 

To Mr. Spurgeon there is no mystery at all. He 
hnows the decrees of God, and he has escaped the 
wrath to come. Hallelujah ! Mr. Spurgeon is a con- 
verted man ; and that makes all the difference. 

Now, how was he converted ? This becomes an im- 
portant question ; for on his early conversion hangs the 
whole of Mr. Spurgeon' s future career. He is one of 
the elect, and in regard to so important a matter I 
much prefer that he should speak for himself. The 
event took place on Dec. 15, 1850, in the Primitive 
Methodist Chapel, Colchester, in Mr. Spurgeon' s six- 
teenth year : — 

' ' It pleased God in my childhood to convince me of 
sin. At last the worst came to the worst. I was mis- 
erable ; I could do scarcely any thing. My heart was 
broken in pieces. Six months did I pra}^, — prayed 
agonizingly with all my heart, and never had an answer. 
I resolved that in the town where I lived I would visit 
every place of worship, in order to find out the way of 
salvation. I felt I was willing to do any thing and be 
any thing if God would onl}^ forgive me. I set off, 
determined to go round to all the chapels, and I went 
to all the places of worship ; and though I dearly vene- 
rate the men that occupj^ those pulpits now, and did so 
then, I am bound to say that I never heard them once 
fully preach the gospel. I mean b}^ that, the}^ preached 
truth, great truths, many good truths that were fitting 
to many of their congregation, spiritually minded peo- 



220 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAMENT. 

.pie ; but what I wanted to know was, How can I get 
my sins forgiven ? And thej never once told me that. 
I wanted to hear how a poor sinner under a sense of 
sin might find peace with God ; and when I went I 
heai'd a sermon on ' Be not deceived : God is not 
mocked,' which cut me up worse, but did not say how 
I might escape. I went another dsLj, and the text was 
something about the glories of the righteous ; nothing 
for poor me. I was something like a dog under the 
table, — not allowed to eat of the children's food. I 
went time after time, and I can honestly say that I 
don't know that I ever went without praj^er to God; 
and I am sure there was not a more attentive hearer in 
all the places than myself : for I panted and longed to 
understand how I might be saved. At last one snowy 
day — it snowed so much I could not go to the place I 
had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on 
the road, and it was a blesssd stop to me — I found 
rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and 
there was a little chapel. I wanted to go somewhere ; 
but I did not know this place. It was the Primitive 
Methodists' Chapel. I had heard of these people from 
man}^, and how they sang so loudly that they made 
people's heads ache ; but that did not matter. I want- 
ed to know how I might be saved ; and, if they made 
my head ache ever so much, I did not care. So sitting 
down, the service went on ; but no minister came. At 
last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, and 
opened his Bible, and read these words : ' Look unto 
me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.' Just set- 
ting his eyes upon me as if he knew me all by heart, 
he said, 'Young man, you are in trouble.' Well, I 
was, sm*e enough. Says he, ' You will never get out 



CHARLES HADDON SPURGEOK. 221 

of it unless you look to Christ.' And then, lifting up 
his hands, he cried out as only, I think, a Primitive 
Methodist could do, ' Look, look, look ! It is only 
*' look," ' said he. I saw at once the way of salvation. 
Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment ! I knew 
not what else he said. I did not take much notice of 
it, I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as 
when the brazen serpent was lifted up, they only looked 
and were healed. I had been waiting to do fifty things ; 
but, when I heard this word ' Look ! ' what a charming 
word it seemed to me ! Oh ! I looked until I could 
almost have looked my eyes away ; and in heaven I will 
look on still in my joy unutterable." 

Here, then, is an authentic narrative of the election 
of Charles Haddon Spurgeon ; and what could be more 
ingenuous? He was converted by the word "look," 
as the sinful old Scotchwoman was brought from nature 
to grace by the solemn emphasis with which Dr. Chal- 
mers pronounced the word Mesopotamia. In a simi- 
larly unhappy frame of mind George Fox sought advice 
from a clergyman, and was admonished to " drink beer 
and dance with the girls." There is in truth a great 
variety of cures for such spiritual maladies. Edward 
Spencer Beesly finds great joj^ in believing in Comtism, 
John Henry Newman in embracing Romanism, and 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon in flying to the iron rock of 
Calvinism. They are all converted from uncertainty to 
certainty. ter quaterque beati ! I would to Heaven 
I were as sure of any thing as these men are of every 
thing. Similar phenomena are common among Mo- 
hammedans and Buddhists. The great mistake that is 
made by such religionists as Mr. Spurgeon is to sup- 
pose that there is no law of conversions as of other 



222 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

mental moods. A true grammar of spiritual assent 
has 3^et to be written ; and when that has been fairly 
executed by some competent investigator of psycho- 
logical phenomena like Professor Bain, for example, 
there will be nothing startling or abnormally significant 
in the experience of the pastor of the Metropolitan 
Tabernacle. The element of mystery will inevitably 
be eliminated, and evangelical conversions will come 
perchance to be classified as a sort of measles or small- 
pox of the intellect. 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born at the village of 
Kelvedon, in Essex, in June, 1834. Like so many 
other families who have left their mark on the religious 
life of England, the Spurgeons are the descendants of 
pious Continental refugees. Driven from the Nether- 
lands by the persecutions of Alva, they settled in Essex, 
and produced a line of pastors — each of them remarka- 
ble in his own way — which has remained ahnost withr 
out a break until now. Preaching has become quite a 
hereditary occupation or passion with the Spurgeons. 
In the phraseology of the sects, "They have never 
wanted a man to stand before the Lord in the service 
of the sanctuar}^" Mr. Spurgeon' s grandfather, James 
Spurgeon, was for over half a century pastor of the 
Independent Church at Stambourne, in Essex. " Like 
Luther,' ' sa3^s his grandson in an article in " The Sword 
and the Trowel," "he had a vivid impression of the 
realit}^ and personality of the great enemy, and was 
accustomed to make short work with his suggestions." 

An extraordinary narrative follows, which I fear 
must be ranked with " contemptible superstitions." He 
had been converted under a particular tree in a wood ; 
and the Devil, appearing to him in a dream, threatened 



CHARLES HADDON SPUEGEON. 223 

to tear him to pieces should he venture to repair to the 
hallowed spot by a particular path. Greatly daring, he 
went ; and discovering, of course, no fiend at the tree, 
he exclaimed, "Ah, cowardly Devil ! you threatened to 
tear me In pieces, and now you do not dare to show 
your face." Instead, however, of finding Satan at the 
rendezvous, his eye lighted on what was much to be 
preferred ; viz., a massive gold ring, for which, mj'steri- 
ously enough, there was no claimant. But the sequel 
to the stor}^ is the best. The old man continued annu- 
ally to visit the spot for devotional exercises, till at last 
a wheat-field occupied the site of the wood. He then 
knelt down among the wheat to pray, but had hardly 
commenced when he was sternly reminded that his 
sacred grove had not been cut down for nothing, and 
that' he must seek the Lord elsewhere. " Maister," 
cried a harsh voice on the other side of an adjoining 
hedge, " thayre be a creazy man a-saying his prayers 
down in the wheat over thayre ! " 

John Spurgeon, the son of this venerable grove-wor- 
shipper, and father of the subject of this sketch, was 
the second of a family of ten. For many years he was 
engaged in business in Colchester ; but, like so many 
of his family, he eventually drifted into the ministry, 
doing duty successively atToUesbury ; Cranbrook, Kent ; 
Fetter Lane, Holborn ; and at Islington. When a mere 
child, his son, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, became an 
inmate of his grandfather's house at Stambourne, and 
at once came under the most pietistic influences. When 
ten years of age (see " Sword and Trowel"), a man 
of God, the Rev. Richard Knill, made him the subject 
of a prophecy, which of course came to pass : — 

" Calling the family together, he took me on his knee, 



224 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

and I distinctly remember his saying, ' I do not know- 
how it is, but I feel a solemn presentiment that this 
child will preach the gospel to thousands, and God will 
bless him to man}^ souls. So sm-e am I of this, that, 
when m}^ little man preaches in Rowland Hill's Chapel, 
as he will do one day, I should like him to promise me 
that he will give out the h^^mn commencing, — ■ 

* God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform.' " 

This sort of half-insinuated miracle is of not infre- 
quent occurrence in Mr. Spurgeon's writings, and it is 
by no means the most satisfactory feature. Whenever 
I stumble on such things, I recall the story of the un- 
sanctilied Yankee politician, who said he did not so 
much object to twaddle as to the people who igno- 
miniously believed in it. Twaddle, he admitted, might 
have its uses. There were two taverns, in this shrewd 
man's town, of unequal repute. One of them was the 
headquarters of the anti-Masonic leaders (anti-Masonry 
was the " cry" of the hour) ; the other was the resort 
of the body of theu* followers. At the beginning of 
the legislative session our politician had taken up his 
quarters at the tavern frequented b}- the anti-Masonic 
rank and file. After a little while, however, he aston- 
ished the anti-Masonic leaders at the other tavern by 
presenting himself at their table. "What brings j^ou 
here ? ' ' they asked : "we thought j'ou had cut us to 
go to the other place." — "So I did," he rephed ; 
''but I can't stand the nonsense of your d anti- 
Masons down there!" — "Well," they laughingl}^ 
responded, " how have 3'ou bettered j^ourself here? for 
we are all anti-Masons too." — "True enough," said 



CHARLES HADDOK SPUEGEON. 225 

the clear-headed legislator ; ' ' but there is a great dif- 
ference. Those d fools down yonder beheve in 

it!" 

It is this unfaltering " believing in it," nevertheless, 
that is at once the source of Mr. Spurgeon's weakness 
and of his strength. When Robespierre made his first 
appearance in the Assembly, he was derided by all but 
Mirabeau, who, more discerning, observed, " That man 
will go far: he believes everj'- word he says." So it 
is with Mr. Spurgeon. He has gone a long way, and 
will continue to go a long way ; for he believes every 
word he says. So has it been with Newman, who, 
firmly mooring his bark to the rock of papal infallibil- 
ity, has become a prince of the Roman Church. One 
only requires to shut one's eyes and walli by faith in 
order, to achieve great things ; yet there are disadvan- 
tages connected with this contemning of one's sight. 
I have, for example, been at pains to glance at most of 
the productions of Mr. Spurgeon's prolific pen, and I 
can find nothing that does not bear an utterly ephem- 
eral impress. His mind, it is true, is thoroughly 
saturated with the ideas and the literature of the 
Hebrew race, — the least scientific of all the great 
nations of antiquity ; but I cannot discover that he is 
abreast of any other kind of knowledge. The sacred 
writings of other peoples are seemingly sealed books to 
him. Neither by the development hypothesis, nor by 
the comparative historical method, — the two great 
clarifiers of modern thinking, — has Mr. Spurgeon 
apparently benefited in the least. 

In a lecture on " The Stud}^ of Theology," delivered 
before the Young Men's Christian Association at New- 
ington, he explained the manner in which he dealt with 



226 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

refractory texts. When books failed him, he offered, 
he said, this prayer: "O Lord! teach me what this 
means. ' ' And he added, " It is marvellous how a hard, 
flint}^ text struck out sparks with the steel of prayer. ' ' 
I admit the sparks : but I desiderate the light of a 
genuine scholarship ; and, though it would be most 
unjust to speak slightingly of Mr. Spurgeon's acquire- 
ments, I cannot but think that his influence for good 
would have been immensely more lasting had he acted 
on his father's sensible advice, and subjected himself to 
a sound collegiate training before becoming a teacher 
of other men. 

The motive which determined him to reverse the 
sound maxim, Disce ut doceas, was characteristic. 
' ' Still holding on to the idea of entering the collegiate 
institution, I thought of writing, and making an imme- 
diate application ; but this was not to be. * That after- 
noon, having to preach at a village station, I walked 
slowlj^, in a meditative frame of mind, over Midsummer 
Common to the little wooden bridge which leads to 
Chesterton ; and in the midst of the common I was 
startled by what seemed to me to be a loud voice, but 
which may have been a singular illusion. Whichever it 
was, the impression it made on my mind was most 
vivid. I seemed very distinctly to hear the words, 
' Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not ! ' 
This led me to look at my position from a different 
point of view, and to challenge my motives and inten- 
tions. . . . Had it not been for these words, I had not 
been where I am now," &c. 

Either a loud voice or a singular illusion, but in any 
case good enough to prevent a lad of eighteen, alreadj^ 
acting as a pastor at Waterbeach, from seeking to com- 



CHAHLES HADDON SPUEGEON. 227 

plete his legitimate studies! "Backed like a weasel, 
or very like a whale," — it is all the same. Well, one 
might think such things ; but if I were Mr. Spurgeon I 
should not say them. However they may affect the 
unthinking mass, they cannot but make the judicious 
grieve. They are a direct incentive to ignorant spiritual 
self-sufficiency. 

What is the consequence to Mr. Spurgeon himself? 
He began to preach when he was sixteen, and between 
hiB earliest and his latest discourses there is but little to 
choose, whether as regards matter or manner. From 
the first he was popular, — a great preacher, but a very 
indifferent thinker, — the prophet of incipient reflection, 
the high priest of emotional religion. He had scarcely 
passed his nineteenth year when he was appointed pas- 
tor of his present metropolitan charge. His first Lon- 
don sermon, in December, 1853, was addressed to two 
hundred hearers ; in three months' time he counted 
auditors by the thousand. Since then he has touched 
nothing which has not prospered, and his industry has 
been enormous. In 1859 was laid the first stone of the 
vast Metropolitan Tabernacle, which, completed in 
1861 at a cost of $156,660, accommodates with ease an 
audience of six thousand persons. In connection with 
the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and owing its origin to 
Mr. Spurgeon's persistency, is the Pastors' College, an 
institution maintained at great cost for the education 
of Baptist preachers ; the Stockwell Orphanage, the 
Colportage Association, and a great variety of other 
benevolent institutions, large and small, which bear 
eloquent testimony to the enduring zeal of Mr. Spur- 
geon in promoting what he regards as the truest inter- 
ests of humanity. In addition to all these achieve- 



228 ELHNENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAMEKT. 

ments, Mr. Spurgeon's publications of one kind or othei 
have been innumerable. Of his sermons some twenty- 
two volumes have already been published, and single 
copies have been known to attain a circulation of two 
hundred thousand. 

Who shall say that the theological age of the world 
has 3^et been outlived ? And it is not because Mr. Spur- 
geon preaches soothing doctrines to his flock that they 
are attracted by him. He is the mainstay of Calvinism 
in England. The elect few alone are to be saved ; the 
rest go to eternal perdition. He will not hear of the 
smallest limitation to their torments. This diabolic 
dogma, worthy of the man who betrayed the noble Ser- 
vetus to the stake, — a man head and shoulders above 
Calvin, both as a theologian and as a man of science, — 
is not worthy either of the head or heart of the pastor 
of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Were it true, the crea- 
ture would then indeed be more just than the Creator, 
and all but the vilest reprobates would refuse to become 
"breeders of sinners." Virtuous men would every- 
where conspire to bring the race to speedy extinction, 
so as to balk the malevolent Demiurgus of his prey. 
The doctrine is rendered forever incredible by its very 
enormity. I took some exception to the religion of 
humanity in the preceding article ; but this may be 
called the religion of inhumanity, and it I totally repu- 
diate. " A plague on both j^our houses ! " more espe- 
cialty the latter. Burns was more humane, and perad- 
venture not less Christian, when he wrote of the " ai'ch 
enemy ' ' — 

" But fare ye weel, auld JSTickie-Ben I 
Oh, wad ye tak' a thought and men', 
Ye aibhns might, I dinna ken, 



CHAELES HADDON SPUEGEON". 229 

Still ha'e a stake: 
I'm wae to tliink upon yon den, 
E'en for your sake." 

At the London School Board election of 1870, Mr. 
Spurgeon materially aided in cementing the compro- 
mise by which Scripture-teaching has been retained 
in rate-supported schools. He forgot the admonition 
of Christ, "Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." He 
called in the arm of the flesh to levy rates from athe- 
ists and all manner of unbelievers for the support of^ 
what was delusively termed non-sectarian education. 
In but too many instances those who have most urgent- 
ly demanded the disendowment of religion in the Church 
have rushed with the greatest haste to. endow it in the 
schools. They have abolished church formularies, and 
made every teacher a formulary unto himself or her- 
self. Instead of one creed being taught, we have at 
present twenty or more in full swing ; for I defy Mr. 
Spurgeon or any other to impart non-sectarian biblical 
instruction. The thing is impossible. 

Mr. Spurgeon' s recent discourse on the crisis now 
passed or passing was what may be described as a 
model political sermon. " ' But,' saith one, ' we hope 
we shall have national prayer.' I hope so, too ; but 
will there be a national confession of sin ? If not, how 
can mere prayer avail ? Will there be a general desire 
to do that which is just and right between man and 
man ? Will there be a declaration of England's policy 
never to trample on the weak, or pick a quarrel for our 
own aggrandisement ? Will there be a loathing of the 
principle that British interests are to be our guiding 
star instead of justice and right? Personal interests 



230 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

are no excuse for doing wrong. If they were so, we 
should have to exonerate the worst of thieves ; for the}^ 
will not invade a house until their personal interests 
invite them. Perhaps the midnight robber ma}^ jet 
learn to plead that he only committed a burglary for 
fear another thief should take the spoil, and make worse 
use of it than he. When our interests are our polices 
nobilit}'' is dead and true honor is departed. Will 
the nation repent of any one of its sins? If stern 
reformation went with supplication, I am persuaded 
that prayer would prevail ; but, while sin is gloried in, 
my hopes find little ground to rest upon. It ma}^ be 
that my text will be the sole answer of the Lord : ' I 
will go and retm-n to my place till they acknowledge 
their ofi'ence and seek my face ; in their affliction they 
wiU seek me early.' " 



VI. 

JAMES BEAL. 

" We cannot bring Utopia by force; 
But better, almost, be at work in sin 
Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep." 

THERE is not in England's vast metropolis, or per- 
adventm-e in all England, a Radical who, during 
the last thirty years, has more consistently acted on 
this principle than Mr. James Beal, the noted Regent- 
street auctioneer and land-agent. 

He is the typical Radical citizen of London, — a bour- 
geois untainted by any of the political failings of the 
English middle class. These consist of indifference to 
the claims of intellectual superiority on the one hand, 
and to the demands of suffering humanity on the other. 
The British shopkeeper is not without his virtues ; but 
he is neither the friend of thinkers nor of the prole- 
tariate. In both these respects Mr. Beal has risen 
conspicuously above the class to which he belongs. 
For more than a quarter of a century this busy, bus- 
tling auctioneer has contrived to devote some portion 
of his day — often the best portion of it — to the fur- 
therance of this scheme or that of municipal or national 
reform. Without fee or reward, in evil and in good 
report, he has gone steadily forward, studying, writing, 

231 



232 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

lecturing, organizing on behalf of some good cause or 
other, — 

" One of much outside bluster: for all that, 
Most honest, brave, and skilful." 

Mr. Beal has made the public interest his interest to 
an extent that has not been excelled b}' smy private 
citizen of the day. His achievements beai' eloquent 
testimony to the good which it is possible for individual 
Eadicals to etiect who may never even aspu-e to a seat 
in the House. The self-forge tfulness which enables 
such public-spirited citizens as Beal to feel gi-eater 
pleasure in returning to Parliament political thinkers 
of the eminence of JMill and INIorlev, than in being 
themselves returned, is one of the most hopeful signs 
of Knglish public life. It points to the ultimate con- 
quest of Philistia b}' the forces of humanity and right 
reasou : and in that sacred warfare Mr. Beal has earned 
for himself imperishable distinction. In Philistia, he is 
not of it. On the contrary, he has assailed the Philis- 
tines in then* chief sti'ongholds of vestiy, guild, and 
corporation, with a vigor which has caused them oft- 
times to tremble behind their intrenchments. But I 
must not anticipate. 

My. Beal's public work, like his private business, has 
been of a strictly practical character, and will be best 
treated in brief chronological sequence. Whatsoever 
his hand has found to do. he has done it with his might. 
There are many good men willing to discharge public 
duties at the solicitation of others : but Mr. Beal is 
not one of these. It has been his function to in- 
vent duties for himself and othei*s, as the sequel wUl 
show. 



JAMES BEAL. 233 

*'No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him: there is always work, 
And tools to work withal, for those who will : 
And he who waits to have his task marked out 
Shall die, and leave his errand unfulfilled." 

James Beal was bom in Chelsea (Sloane Square) in 
February, 1829. His father was a respectable old Tory 
tradesman, who had originally come from Yorkshire. 
He died before Beal had completed his seventeenth 
year, living long enough, however, to satisfy the sub- 
ject of this memoir that he and his male parent pos- 
sessed few or no sympathies in common. It was 
different with Beal's mother. She was a woman as 
remarkable for vigor of mind as of body, and from her 
her son inherited most of his mental and physical char- 
acteristics. Without brothers, and without access to 
his father's sympathies, Beal naturally enough "took 
after" this strong-minded mother, whose memory he 
still reverently cherishes. 

There was no London School Board in those times, 
and young Beal's education was accordingly of a some- 
what meagre kind. He attended several local schools 
kept by private teachers, but never got beyond the 
"beggarly elements" of the three R's. He was 
eventually put to business in his fourteenth year, the 
consequence being that Mr. Beal is substantially a self- 
taught man. No one who has gone through the regular 
scholastic mill could doubt this for a moment. The 
matter of his writings is always excellent ; but the man- 
ner is generally very ixigged. His arrows have terrible 
barbs, but no feathers. They do not kill at long range ; 
but they are very formidable in a hand-to-hand encoun- 
ter. As a journalist, the directness, not to say the 



234 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAMENT. 

fury, of his method of attack — so different from that 
of the professional scribe — arrests, and is bound to 
arrest, attention by its very novelty, if for no better 
reason. 

Mr. Beal's business training was in every way more 
fortunate than his educational. He commenced as clerk 
in a solicitor's office ; and before he had completed his 
sixteenth year he had mastered Blackstone, and acquired 
a general knowledge of legal forms and principles which 
could not fail to be of the greatest use to him as a man 
of business in after-life. About this time he had for- 
tunately few companions except his books ; and these 
he read with avidity, storing up much valuable infor- 
mation, which he shortly found most serviceable. One 
of his few friends happily possessed a large and well- 
selected library ; and Beal, having the run of it, did 
not neglect the opportunity to make up for the short- 
comings of his school-training. 

Subsequently Mr. Beal entered the office of an up- 
holsterer ; but before he was twenty-one he found him- 
self a partner in the extensive auctioneer and land- 
agency business of which he has now for many years 
been the principal. This Radical of the Radicals has 
bought and sold more real estate, let and hired more 
aristocratic mansions, than perhaps any land-agent in 
England. Such a fact, so antecedently improbable, 
speaks volumes for the integrity and capacity of the 
man. 

In 1848 Mr. Beal began to apply his mind to politics 
" in earnest ; " that is to say, he became a confirmed 
and immovable Radical. He had previously induced 
his father, much to the old man's subsequent astonish- 
ment, to record his vote for Cochrane, then Radical 



JAMES BEAL. 235 

candidate for Middlesex, — a thoroughly characteristic 
act ; for Beal, with all his fiery zeal, has a wonderful 
knack of converting foes into friends, if only an oppor- 
tunity of exerting his personal influence is afforded him. 
His own mind is so thoroughly made np, that he will 
speedily make up yours, if you are not on your guard. 
He became a member of the " Discussion Classes " 
which then met at the National Hall, Holborn ; and 
there he made the acquaintance of such well-known 
apostles of Radicalism as Hetherington, Lovett, Wat- 
son, and Place. 

The first reform with which his name is associated 
was the abolition of the penny stamp on newspapers. 
Brougham had succeeded, in 1834, in eff'ecting a reduc- 
tion of the obnoxious impost from fourpence to a penny ; 
and Hetherington, Place, Beal, and others, in 1848, 
formed a committee for its total removal. In further- 
ance of the movement, Beal, in 1849, published an ex- 
cellent pamphlet entitled ' ' A Few Words in Favor of 
the Liberty of the Press, and the Abolition of the Penny 
Stamp on Newspapers. ' ' The committee was ultimately 
merged in an association for the repeal of both the 
advertisement duty and the paper duty, — objects which 
were eventually attained. 

In 1850 Mr. Beal contributed to "The Freeholder" 
a valuable series of letters on the land question. They 
were reprinted in 1855 ; and a second edition, entitled 
"Free Trade in Land," appeared in 1876. Both as 
regards theor}^ and practice, the author shows himself 
a thorough master of his subject. He has read and he 
has observed, and both reading and observation have 
convinced him that our whole system of land-tenure is 
simply barbarous. From 1851 to 1855 he was actively 



236 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

engaged in establishing freehold-land societies through- 
out England and Scotland. Many suburban estates 
were bought and subdivided among the shareholders as 
sites for cottages ; one out of many advantages of the 
arrangement being that thousands of artisans, then 
without the franchise, were thus enabled, by a flank 
movement, to obtain it. 

About the same time Mr. Beal came prominently 
forward in the character of an ecclesiastical reformer, 
addressing a series of trenchant letters to the Bishop of 
London on certain popish practices observed in the 
Church of St. Paul, Wilton Place, and of St. Barna- 
bas, Pimlico. A memorable action, " Westerton and 
Beal V. Liddel," ensued. The legality of ritualism 
had never been legally challenged since the Reforma- 
tion. Mr. Beal appeared in person before the Privy 
Council, and obtained a favorable judgment, but with- 
out costs, which were cheerfully defrayed by public 
subscription. The agitation resulted in the Public 
"Worship Act, and the end is not yet. 

In 1857 Mr. Beal entered on a long and arduous 
struggle with the gas-companies of the metropolis. 
These companies had ' " districted ' ' London among 
themselves, and ruled the consumers with a rod of 
iron. Mr. Beal contrived to effect a combination of 
vestries against the companies, — on the principle, I 
suppose, of setting a thief to catch a thief, — and after 
a contest which lasted all through '57, '58, '59, and 
'60, the Metropolitan Gas Act was passed, which 
improved the quality of the gas-supply, limited its 
price, cm-tailed dividends, and effected a net saving to 
the consumers of three million one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand dollars per annum, — a sum equivalent 
to the entire school-board rate. 



JAMES BEAL. 237 

In 1870 Mr. Beal induced the Government to give 
notice of its intention to improve the water-supply of 
London. Unfortunately, the good intention, like so 
many others, went to pave the unmentionable region 
spoken of by Dr. Johnson ; but the subject has not 
been allowed to drop. It has been demonstrated at 
influential public meetings, recently held, that the 
present metropolitan water-supply is unsatisfactory as 
regards purity, cost, and the poundage principle of 
assessment. Put the water-supply under representa- 
tive instead of company control, and it is calculated 
tJiat seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars per 
annum can readily be saved to the ratepayers. In 
attempting to deal with this question, the late Home 
Secretary acted with such imprudence as to precipitate 
the dissolution that wrecked the Government, Mr. 
Beal skilfully fanning the flame of discontent excited 
by his monstrous proposals. 

In 1876 Mr. Beal broke new and most important 
ground. Fearing lest an increased education-rate 
should render the cause of scholastic enlightenment 
unpopular, he set himself to investigate other possible 
soiu-ces of revenue, and an altogether remarkable series 
of papers on " The Corporation Guilds and Charities 
of the City of London," contributed to "The Dis- 
patch" and signed " Nemesis," was the result. The 
revelations were simply astounding. The corporation, 
with a revenue of three million dollars per annum 
derived from the " common good ; " the liveries, with 
more than five million dollars issuing out of trust 
funds ; and the city charities, with a good five hundred 
thousand dollars annual income, — were shown to be 
one vast network of corruption and malversation. Ab 
uno cUsce omnia. 



238 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

In 1513 the mercers held a hundred and sixty acres 
of trust-land, located chie% in Marylebone and West- 
minster (Bradbury's trust). They now retain eight 
and a half acres ; and no man can or will tell what they 
have done with the rest of the estate. The eight and a 
half acres yield a rental of a hundred and thirty-seven 
thousand eight hundi'ed and seventy-five dollars ; and 
the trustees make a return to the Charity Commission- 
ers of a fixed " annual pajanent of £1 10s. per annum to 
St. Stephen, Coleman Street." Having done this, they 
feel they have discharged then' duty towards the " pious 
founder" and the public, and pocket the little balance 
for the trouble they have taken. In New York certain 
malefactors connected with the municipality, who in a 
similar manner sought to convert public trusts to 
private uses, speedily found their way to jail amid a 
hurricane of popular execration. If they had been in 
" famous London town," they would have been central 
figures at the Lord Mayor's show, clothed, not in sack- 
cloth and ashes, but in purple and fine linen, the ob- 
served of all observers. Mr. Beal holds, and I heartily 
agree with him, that these nefarious city jobbers must 
be compelled to disgorge at least half their revenues for 
metropolitan education, or justice will remain a laugh- 
ing-stock. Mr. Beal, almost single-handed, has earned 
dismay into their camp. The Grocers' Company has 
given a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to 
the London Hospital, and the guilds are organizing a 
technical college to cost a hundred thousand dollars per 
annum. But these are not tokens of genuine repent- 
ance. They are mere dissembling peace-ofierings to 
be set aside b}' the public with contempt. 

The existence of so many anomahes and gigantic 



JAMES BEAL. 239 

abuses convinced Mr. Beal, as early as 1861, that what 
is really wanted is a single municipality for the whole 
of London. In that 3^ear a committee of the House, 
before which Mr. Beal was examined, considered the 
whole subject ; and ever since his views have been rap- 
idly winning public approval. Mill, Buxton, Elcho, and 
Shuttleworth have each unsuccessfully brought in bills 
embodying Beal's ideas. Latterly Mr. Gladstone has 
promised his powerful support, and placed the reform 
of the municipality of London at the head of his long 
list of " unredeemed pledges." Eventual triumph is, 
accordingij'-, as good as certain. When it comes, it 
will be the cleansing out of the biggest Augean stable 
in Christendom. 

Mr. Beal, as is well known, was the moving spirit in 
the generous electioneering effort which, in 1865, re- 
sulted in the return of the late John Stuart Mill for 
Westminster free of expense ; and it was owing to his 
enlightened action that the first London School Board 
had among its members such distinguished men as 
Lawrence, Huxley, and Morle}^ And what he did for 
Mill' he strove hard to do for the greatest of his dis- 
ciples, Morley, but in vain. 

^Mr. Cross's vaunted Artisans' Dwellings Act Mr. 
Beal would have rendered workable, if the right honor- 
able gentleman had only had the good sense to profit 
by his advice. His plan was, not to enforce sales to 
the local authority, but to compel the owners of dilapi- 
dated tenements themselves to incur all risks in con- 
nection with the pulling down and re-erection of 
condemned buildings owned by them. As it is, the 
Metropolitan Board is at a standstill, having lost four 
million dollars of the ratepaj^ers' money in the vain 



240 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OP PAEIJAMENT. 

attempt to sell the sites of " rookeries " for as much as 
they cost. Verily, wisdom is justified of her children. 

In conclusion, it may be said, that in no progressive 
movement, national or municipal, since,1848, has Beal 
failed to play a manty and singularly disinterested part. 
In 1851, when Joseph Hume and Sir Joshua Walmsley 
endeavored to revive public interest in parliamentary 
reform, Beal " stumped " London for them, and mate- 
rially helped to convince Earl Russell of the inexpe- 
diency of adhering to his " finality " policy. He had 
his reward in the legislation of 1867. 

Nor have Mr. Beal's sj^mpathies been confined to 
London or England exclusively. He was a determined 
partisan of the North during the American civil war ; 
and, at a public meeting held in London in the interest 
of the Confederates, he tore down the "palmetto 
flag" from the wall, and trampled it under foot at 
the risk of serious personal violence. 

When Garibaldi was wounded at Aspromonte, he 
raised a fund of five thousand dollars to send out 
Professor Partridge, to give the noble general the ben- 
efit of first-rate surgical skill. 

Indeed, as I have said, it is Impossible to mention 
almost any good pie for thh-ty j^ears past in which 
this indefatigable friend of humanity has not had a 
finger. One stands simply amazed at the multitude of 
his good deeds, which have no smack of self-conscious- 
ness. It would be impossible to imagine a reformer 
with less cant or nonsense about him than Beal. He 
has no "unction" of any kind, — a hearty, sharp, 
decisive man, ordained to be a Radical and pioneer of 
progress from the foundations of the world. " Wha 
does his best," said Burns, "will whiles do mair." 
James Beal, methinks, has oft done mair. 



VII. 

MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY. 

" His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand 
If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned; 
For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired) 
That all men (not orthodox) may he inspired." 

MR. CONWAY'S inspiration may be questioned, 
but none wiU gainsay his total heterodoxy. If 
he is not a prophet, it is not his fault : he is the least 
orthodox preacher in London. "His faith has centre 
everywhere, nor cares to fix itself to form." 

The congregation of South-place Chapel, Finsbury, 
are Nonconformists who non-conform very much. 
Their Bible is called "The Sacred Anthology," — a 
book of ethiiical Scriptures, collected and edited by 
Mr. Conway. The purpose of the work is simply 
moral. " He has aimed," he says in the preface, " to 
separate the more universal and enduring treasures 
contained in ancient Scriptures from the rust of super- 
stition and the ore of ritual ; ' ' and he has succeeded in 
his aim. To good rationalists " The Sacred Anthol- 
ogy ' ' ought to be what ' ' The Garden of the Soul ' ' is 
to good Romanists. "The utterance does not whoUy 
perish which many peoples utter ; nay, this is the voice 
of God." 

At South Place the condemnation of the Pharisees 

241 



242 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

who, for a pretence, make long prayers, is not incurred. 
No praj^ers are offered up. There has been substituted 
what is called "meditations," or moral soliloquies, and 
the finest music. The whole atmosphere of the chapel 
is ' ' advanced ' ' to such a degree that Unitarians of 
the older school, when they occasionally enter it, are 
almost as puzzled as orthodox Trinitarians what to 
make of it. The average intellectual level of the con- 
gregation is, I should imagine, the highest in London. 
Men and women who could not be induced to listen to 
any other preacher go readily to hear Mr. Conway. 
Nowhere will you find a finer collection of human 
heads ; and yet Mr. Conway is not an orator in any 
sense of the word. 

His predecessor, the celebrated W. J. Fox, " Pub- 
licola " of " The Dispatch," and member of Parhament 
for Oldham, was a different man. He combined all the 
qualities of a popular, if heretic, preacher. It is what 
Mr. Conway sa3^s, and not how he says it, that attracts. 
He is hardlj^ even a scholar in the English and strictly 
technical sense of the term, and in matters of detail he 
is occasionally inaccurate. But he is an original and 
fearless thinker, — a born instructor of other men in 
whatever is true, beautiful, and good, with an ear deli- 
cately attuned to catch the faintest accents of the " still, 
small voice" of conscience. What he hears in the 
closet he has the courage to proclaim from the housetop. 
His discourses consequently bear an oracular impress. 
They have, moreover, an aroma of mysticism, faint but 
sweet, — a breath of New England transcendentalism 
peculiarly grateful to unaccustomed Cockney nostrils. 
It were curious to speculate what would happen if say 
Spurgeon and Conway were to exchange pulpits for a 



MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY. 243 

month or so. Both churches, I imagine, would be com- 
plctel3' emptied. To the eclectics of South Place Mr. 
Spurgeon's doctrines would be mere foolishness, while to 
the Calvinists of the Tabernacle Mr. Conway would be 
worse than a stumbling-block : he would be Antichrist. 
Yet there is a golden bridge over this terrible chasm of 
conflicting beliefs. Mr. Conway and Mr. Spurgeon 
have a common object for which they toil; viz., the 
moral elevation of manldnd. Where this essence of 
all true religions is present, the form is of secondary 
consequence. Creed or no creed, for the good the path 
of duty is the same. 

'' The soul is still oracular: amid the market's din 
List the ominous, stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, 
' They enslave their children's children who make compro- 
mise with sin.' " 

Moncure Daniel Conway, it need scarcely be recorded, 
is b}^ birth an American. He was born in 1832 near 
Fredericksburg, Stafford County, Ya., where his father, 
Walker Pe^'ton Conway, a gentleman of independent 
fortune, enjoj^ed universal esteem. The elder Conway 
was both a county magistrate and a member of the 
State legislature. The stock had come originally from 
Wales, and in the course of a century or more had 
multiplied rapidly in Stafford County. Intermarriage 
with other ' ' leading families ' ' of Moncures and Daniels 
had been very frequent. The Moncures were of Scot- 
tish Jacobite extraction, while the Daniels were English. 
The father of young Conway's mother was John Mon- 
cure Daniel, a graduate in medicine of Edinburgh 
University, and surgeon-general of the United States 
arm3^ Among her ancestors was likewise Stone, the 



244 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

fii'st colonial governor of Maryland ; while her grand- 
father, Thomas Stone, enjoyed the proud distinction of 
being one of the signatories of the famous Declaration 
of Independence. These were matters of some moment 
in a State where slavery was an institution, and ' ' mean 
whites " were treated with contempt. 

Supported by troops of affluent friends and kinsmen, 
Conway's path in life seemed at its commencement 
nowise steep or arduous. As a politician he might 
hope to climb the ladder of power and dignity in the 
republic easil}^ and rapidly ; but the lion of slavery 
crouched in the way. His father was, unfortunately, 
a large slave-owner, — a humane man, it is true, but 
still, lilie his neighbors, an owner of scores of hmnan 
chattels. "Few," saj^s Mr. Conwa}^ in his "Testi- 
monies concerning Slavery," "are the really peaceful 
days that I remember having smiled on in my old Vir- 
ginian home. The outbreaks of the negroes among 
themselves ; the disobediences which the necessary dis- 
cipline can never suffer to be overlooked ; the terrors 
of devoted parents at the opportunities for the display 
of evil tempers and the inception of nameless vices 
among their sons, — I remember as the demons haunt- 
ing those days. I have often heard my parents say that 
the care of slaves had made them prematurely old." 

Conway's earl}^ education was the best that the neigh- 
borhood afforded. As a child he attended several pri- 
vate schools, and subsequently he became a pupil of 
the Classical and Mathematical Academ}^ in Fredricks- 
burg. Here he made rapid progress, and in due course 
was entered as an undergraduate of Dickinson College, 
Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1849. The stu- 
dents were mostly from Marjdand and Virginia, with 



I 



MONCUEB DANIEL CONWAY. 245 

strong pro-slavery sympathies ; and young Conway re- 
turned to his Virginian home in his eighteenth year as 
full of anti-Northern prejudices as the rest. He com- 
menced the study of law at Warrenton, and, while thus 
engaged, fell under the influence of a remarkable man, 
his cousin John M. Daniel, the formidable duellist editor 
of the notorious " Richmond Examiner." Daniel was 
the best educated man in Richmond, a profound student 
of Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Feuerbach, Fourier, 
Cousin, Voltaire. His range of vision far exceeded 
that of any man Conway had known, and it is scarcely 
to be wondered at that Daniel made a strong impression 
on his youthful kinsman's mind. He professed to rest 
slavery on a quasi-scientific basis of racial inferioritj^ 
"We hold," he declared in his journal, to which Con- 
way became, a contributor, ' ' that negroes are not men 
in the sense in which that term is used by the Declara- 
tion of Independence. Were the slaves men, we should 
be unable to disagree with Wendell Phillips." 

Thus fortified in his pro-slavery ideas, Conway's 
next step was to become the secretary of a Southern 
rights, otherwise a secessionist, club, whose sole raison 
d'etre was to break up the Union in the interest of the 
" peculiar institution " of the South on the first availa- 
ble opportunity. So much for the pernicious teaching 
of his misanthropic cousin. But happil}^ other consid- 
erations began to weigh with Conway. If circum- 
stances had leagued him with the oppressor, kind Na- 
ture had made him at heart an irrepressible Radical. 
In 1850, before the completion of his eighteenth jxar, 
appeared his first pamphlet, entitled "Free Schools in 
Virginia," which was distributed among the people, 
and laid on the desk of every member of the State Con- 



246 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

vention which met that year for the revision of the 
Vkginian Code. I have read this plea for free schools 
to educate the "mean whites," and can only wonder 
that a lad of eighteen should have had the abihty or 
patience to produce so masterly an appeal. The effect 
was, nevertheless, most disappointing. He was viru- 
lently attacked by the journals as one who, by advo- 
cating a " mob road to learning," was jeopardizing the 
very existence of Southern society. The mean whites, 
lOve the servile blacks, must be kept in ignorance. It 
is not, however, so long since representatives of our 
own ' ' agricultural interests ' ' were in the habit of giv- 
ing expression to views equally enlightened. But Mr. 
Conwa}^ was not thus to be put down. Reason, con- 
science, compassion, told him that the cause he had 
espoused was just and beneficent. He had not taken it 
up, as he had taken slavery, on trust. He had thought 
out the problem for himself, and he remained unshaken, 
in his convictions. Whether he knew it or not, he had 
taken a distinct step awsiy from the slaveholding oligar- 
chy in the dkection of freedom. In order to promote 
his laudable object, he threw up the law and took to the 
gospel. He became a Methodist preacher as the like- 
liest means of reaching the hearts and heads of the 
people whom he desired to benefit. The Baltimore 
Methodist Conference speedily appinted him to the 
charge of some twelve congTegations. One of these 
happil}'- lay in a section of countr^^ settled by Quakers, 
and consequently unpolluted b}'' any taint of slavery. 
He saw prosperous agiiculturists and happy, free, edu- 
cated negro laborers, and the scales began to fall from 
his eyes. He had never di-eamed of such a state of 
society. At first he was bewildered ; but an aged 



MONCUEE DANIEL CONWAY. 247 

Quaker, whose acquaintance he had made, eventually 
enabled Mm to turn a steady, admiring gaze on the 
rising sun of negro emancipation. 

" Up, up! and the dusky race 
Tl&at sat in darkness long, 
Be swift his feet as antelope's, 
And as behemoth strong." 

"Again," says Mr. Conway, "I visited the old 
Quaker patriarch, and told him with what delight I 
had found that the interior of Sandy Spring was even 
more attractive than its exterior. ' Now, friend, can 
thee account for this evident superiorit}^ of the Friends' 
neighborhood over the rest of this count}', or of thy 
own State? ' — ' Well,' I ventured, ' doubtless you have 
certain habits of thrift and industry which others have 
not.' — ' Perhaps it is so,' said the old man, gravely. 
After which followed a long silence, which I felt 
belonged to him, and was for him to break. Then he 
turned his eyes — at once luminous and keen — full 
upon me, and said, ' But there is one habit of our 
people to which thee will find, should thee search into 
it, is to be traced all the improved condition of our 
lands and our homes ; that is, the habit of taking care 
that our laborers get just wages for their work. No 
slave has touched any sod in any field of Sandy 
Spring.' " 

These snnple words eventual^ converted the reluc- 
tant secretary of the Southern Rights Club into an 
uncompromising abolitionist. Henceforth his duty, 
with respect to the great social problem of his time and 
countrj^, was clear to him. 

The change in his religious conceptions was no less 



248 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

striking. About the time of the Moody and Sankey 
revivals, Mr. Conway gave an account of his own 
conversion almost unparalleled in its -candor : "It 
was my destiny to be born in a region where this kind 
of excitement is almost chronic. . . . When the 
summer came the leading Methodist families — of 
which mj father's was one — went to dwell in the 
woods in tents. About two weeks were there spent in 
praying and preaching all the day long, pausing only 
for meals ; and during all that time the enclosure in 
front of the pulpit was covered over with screaming 
men and women, and frightened children. . . . While 
I was there women came and wept over me ; preachers 
quoted Scripture to me. No one whispered to me that 
I should resolve to be better, — more upright, true, and 
kind. Hundreds were converted by my side, and 
broke out into wild shouts of jo}^ ; but I had no new 
experience whatever. I was not in the least a sceptic,: 
I believed every word told me. Yet nothing took 
place at all. On a certain evening I swooned. When 
I came to m3^self I was stretched out on the floor with 
friends singing around me, and the preachers informed 
me that I had been the subject of the most admirable 
work of divine gTace they had ever witnessed. I took 
then- word for it. All I knew was that I was thor- 
oughly exhausted, and was ill for a week." But he 
did not take their word for it for an unreasonable time. 
In 1852 his religious as well as his social ideas under- 
went modifications so unportant that he determined 
to betake himself to Harvard Universit}^, where the 
dominant theolog}' is Unitarian. Here he graduated 
B.D. in 1854, having in the interval contracted lasting 
friendships with Emerson, Parker, Sumner, Phillips, 
and others, the best hearts and heads in the republic. 



MOKCUEE DANIEL CONWAY. 249 

After completing his studies, he returned with fond 
hopes to his home in Virginia. But it was only to find 
that, as an abolitionist, his own flesh and blood regard- 
ed him as a leper. Eventually a company of young 
men confronted him in the street, and warned him that 
he must henceforth regard himself as a perpetual exile 
from Virginia, kindly adding that he had been spared 
tar and feathers solely on his parents' account. There- 
upon he again turned his steps towards the free North, 
and in 1854 he was appointed minister of the Unitarian 
church in Washington, but did not long find rest for 
the sole of his foot. An antislavery sermon which he 
preached, in denunciation of the dastardly outrage on 
Senator Sumner by Preston Brooks, led to his dismissal 
by the most liberal and antislavery congregation in 
Washington. In 1856 he was invited by the Unitari- 
ans of Cincinnati to become their pastor, and there 
some of his most useful and brilliant discourses were 
delivered. But his mind was absorbed in the impend- 
ing conflict with the slave-power, and he ultimately 
became an abolitionist lecturer in Ohio and the Middle 
States. And his pen was as busy in the work of eman- 
cipation as his tongue. In 1858 were published 
"Tracts for To-day ; " in. 1861 came "The Eejected 
Stone;" in 1862, " The Golden Hour." All these 
were powerful weapons put into the hands of the 
abolitionists; "The Rejected Stone," in particular, 
making a deep impression on the mind of the martyr- 
president, Abraham Lincoln. Subsequently he be- 
came the first editor of " The Boston Commonwealth," 
— a high-class weekly, primarily started as an abolition 
organ. Meanwhile, his father and his two brothers 
threw in their lot with the secessionists, the young 
men both receiving wounds in the fratricidal struggle. 



250 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

At last, when the tramp of the Federal soldiers was 
heard in the streets of the little town whence Conway 
had been driven in 1854, he hastened to the spot to 
assist the slaves of his father's household to escape 
to the free North- West. By dint of great exertions he 
found the fugitives. The old woman who had nursed 
him sprang forward, and folded him in her arms as if 
he were still a child. ' ' Far ihto the night we- sat 
together ; and they listened with glistening eyes as I 
told them of the region to which I meant to take them, 
where never should they 

' Feel oppression, 
Never hear of war again.' 

At the Baltimore Railway Station all was nearly lost. 
A threatening mob beset the station, and the ticket- 
agent peremptorily intimated, ' I cannot let these 
negroes go on this road at any price.' I simpl}^ pre- 
sented my military order to this ver}^ disagreeable and 
handsome agent, and he began to read it. He had 
read but two or three words of it, when he looked up 
with astonishment, and said, — 

" ' The papers say these are your father's slaves.' — 
'They are,' I replied. 'Why, sir, you could sell 
them in Baltimore for fifty thousand dollars ! ' — ' Pos- 
sibly,' I replied. Whereupon (moved, probabty, by 
supposing that I was making a greater sacrifice than 
was the case) the young man's face was unsheathed : 
' By God ! you shall have every car on this road if jou 
want it, and take the negroes where you please ! ' 
Then, having sold me the tickets, he gave his ticket- 
selling to a subordinate, and went out to secure us a 
car to ourselves ; and from that moment, though the 



MONCUP.E DANIEL CONWAY. 251 

imprecations around us went on, our way was made 
smooth." 

In 1863 Mr. Conway was commissioned by the 
friends of abolition to come to England to try to 
influence English as he had American opinion in favor 
of the Federal cause, and in this good work he was 
engaged when the Confederacy suddenly collapsed. 
At that juncture South-place Chapel was in need of a 
pastor ; and who so able to discharge the duties as this 
transatlantic iconoclast and idealist, who brought 
with him to the old world the best manhood of the 
new? 

In 1875 he revisited the West on a lecturing-tour, 
and was received by his long-estranged family, and by 
his countrymen generally, with open arms. He was 
offered the pastorate of Theodore Parker's old church 
in Boston, but preferred to return to England, where 
the battle with theological obscurantism and political 
oligarchy is more arduous. England has sent so many 
of her good and brave men to America, that it is but 
right that the latter should begin to return the compli- 
ment. 

Mr. Conwa}-, needless to say, remains a stanch 
republican. Like all intelligent American citizens 
whom I have known, the more he has studied our po- 
litical institutions, the less he has been captivated by 
them. His little work, "Republican Superstitions," 
is the best commentary on the working of ' ' our glori- 
ous constitution" that I know. Therein he shows, 
with incontrovertible logic, and complete mastery of 
details, that it is precisely the monarchical elements, 
thoughtlessly or superstitiously imported into the Con- 
stitution of the United States by its framers, that have 



252 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

worked all the mischief in the republic. He would 
have but one chamber, returned bj^ equal constituencies, 
with a chief magistrate and executive directly eligible 
by, and responsible to, the legislature. A second 
chamber, if it is opposed to the popular house, is 
noxious ; if it is in harmony with it, it is superfluous. 

Mr. Conway has learned, by the sad experience of 
his own beloved republic, how disastrous a thing is the 
doctrine of state rights or home rule. Let this Radical 
of Radicals speak a word in season tq those undiscern- 
ing ones in England, who in this matter seem in haste 
to confound purblind re-action with action, retrogression 
with progression : — 

' ' Could there be a more cruel concession made by 
England to Ireland than that very home rule for which 
so earnest a demand is now made ? Whether England 
should concede complete independence to Ireland may 
be a question ; but to raise up in Ireland ambitions 
that at some point must be checked, to give embodi- 
ment to aspirations and interests which no sooner reach 
their development than thej^ will be certainly crushed, 
were the gift of weak indulgence, and by no means 
that of true generosit}^ For everj^ concession the 
Northern people made to ' state sovereignty ' in the 
South, several thousand Southerners had to be slain 
in the end." 



VIII. 

JAMES ALLANSON PICTOlSr. 

" * Come wander with me,' she said, 
' Into regions yet untrod, 
And read what is yet unread 
In the manuscripts of God.' " 

JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, the author of" The 
Mystery of Matter," is one of those rare per- 
sons who, to use his own quaint phrase, have "gone 
through materialism, and come out at the other side." 
Such an explorer, it will readily be admitted, well de- 
serves a place in this or any other series of pioneers of 
progress. But I would rather not be the chronicler of 
his toUsome journey. No wonder if the St. Thomas's- 
square congregation, Hackney, found difficulty in fol- 
lowing their spiritual guide on his dim and perilous way. 
But, though the path which Mr. Picton has cleft 
through the materialistic jungle be arduous for ordinary 
mortals, to tread, it is, in my opinion, the best that has 
yet been cleared. ' ' Narrow is the way that leadeth 
unto life, and few there be that find it." Mr. Picton 
makes a clean sweep of the supernatural, but imparts 
to the natural a lofty significance which more than com- 
pensates for the loss. "All forms of finite existence 
may, for aught I care, be reduced to modes of motion ; 
but motion itself has become to me only the phenom- 

253 



254 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAKLIAMENT. 

enal manifestation of the energy of an infinite life, in 
which it is a joy to be lost. To me the doctrine of an 
eternal continuity of development has no terrors ; for, 
believing matter to be, in its ultimate essence, spiritual, 
I see in every cosmic revolution a ' change from glory 
to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' I can look 
down the uncreated, unbeginning past without the 
sickness of bewildered faith. My Father worketJi 
hitherto. My sense of eternal order is no longer jarred 
by the sudden appearance in the universe of a dead, 
inane substance foreign to God and spiritual being." 

" Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, 
And weave for God the mantle thou seest him by." 

All religions, properly so called, conceive of phe- 
nomena as the outcome of an eternal, incomprehensible 
power, ' ' which makes for righteousness ' ' throughout 
the universe. Ever}^ irreligious S3^stem, on the other 
hand, regards the phenomenal altogether apart from its 
som-ce. The question then arises. Which way of look- 
ing at the mighty enigma is the more philosophic ? The 
positivists repty, and Mr. Bradlaugh repUes, " We 
know nothing of the source, nor can know." But 
their parade of ignorance almost presupposes the reality 
of that of which the}^ profess to be ignorant. 

' ' The same intellectual constitution which makes 
science possible — the impulse to seek after the reason 
of things and their completeness — implies in its very 
germ an alread}^ existing, though inarticulate, belief in 
ultimate substance and in an infinite unit}^ Further, 
the very fact that our mental faculties cannot work 
without suggesting this dim majesty which is beyond 
their ken, compels a constant reference thereto, which, 



JAMES ALLANSOK PICTON". 255 

as it is involved in the laws of thought, cannot be 
without practical import." Our positlvist brethren 
will, of course, seek to impugn the validity of such 
reasoning ; but they are, as a rule, persons so super- 
stitiously anti-superstitious that their objections may be 
discounted almost by anticipation. In any case Mr. 
Picton believes that he has passed clean through the 
prevalent materialism, and emerged into a spiritual 
effulgence, which irradiates, in some degree, the darkest 
crannies of human destiny. He has unbounded faith, 
that is to say loyalty, to the divine will, as he appre- 
hends it. 

But, if his own faith in the Eternal overflows, his 
charity towards those who have stopped midway in the 
ascent of the materialistic hill of difficulty is equally 
without limit. ' ' Take the philosopher, ' ' he says, ' ' who 
thought out, or thinks he has thought out, his system 
of the universe. Finding no place therein for a God 
such as he was taught to speak about and dream about 
in his childish years, he calmly says, ' There is no God 
at all. ' . . . He is confident in his system of the uni- 
verse, and is assured that it always works together 
under the same conditions to the same ends. He would 
stake his life upon the certainty that impurity and du- 
plicity and dishonesty must bring misery and confusion 
into the commonwealth. Now, such a man has far 
more trust in the Lord than ever he supposes. Through 
despair of presenting that inconceivable Being in any 
form whatever to his consciousness, he fancies that he 
dispenses with the thought entirely. But the more 
nearly he comes to a realization of oneness in that 
system of the universe which he thinks he has wrought 
out, the more nearly does he come to the thought of 



256 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

God. The more confidently he rests in the certain 
working of moral as well as of physical laws, the more 
does he manifest that which, in om* minds, is equivalent 
to trust in the Lord. Under any form of religion, and 
under no form of professed religion, then, the exhor- 
tation of the text, ' Trust in the Lord and do good,' 
may be carried out, and its creed asserted." In a 
word, Mr. Picton's charity induces him to ascribe 
religion to the professedly irreligious. He compels 
them to come in. 

Discussing the problem of the immortality of the 
soul, he says, " We should not repine if the larger life 
beyond death remains a hope too grand for any earthly 
form. I live, — this I know; and all around me is a 
Power, immeasurable, inscrutable, of which I can only 
think that it lives more grandly and mightily than I, 
folding me in its embrace, and making a reverent feel- 
ing of my own nothingness the supreme bliss. Whence 
I came I know not ; whither I go I cannot tell : but 
every moment of true communion with the Infinite 
opens out eternity. Whatever tenfold complicated 
change has happened or may come, however strangely 
the bounds which now limit my personal life may be 
broken through, however unimaginably my conscious- 
ness of God may be enlarged, it is impossible that the 
more real can be merged in the less real ; and, whilQ 
material phenomena are but phantoms, God himself only 
is more real than I." 

The above quotations give but a faint impression of 
this remarkable work, ''The Mystery of Matter," 
which, along with an earlier volume, " New Theories 
and the Old Faith," goes further towards revivifjdng 
true rehgion, by rendering it credible, than all the 



JAMES ALLANSON PICTOIT. 257 

heavy tomes of orthodox theology which have appeared 
within the last decade. Mr. Picton has combined 
science, logic, disciplined imagination, and fervent 
piety in the execution of a task of immense difficulty ; 
and the result is a cogent testimony to the indestructi- 
bility of essential religion in the soul of man. 

" Still Thou talkest with Thy children 
Freely as in eld sublime; 
Humbleness and truth and patience 
Still give empire over time." 

James Allanson Picton was born in Liverpool in the 
historic year of reform, 1832. His father, whose name 
was recently so honorably before the public as the 
originator and chairman of the Liverpool Free Library 
and Museum, was then a well-to-do architect, a stanch 
Liberal in a communit}^ abounding in political re-action- 
aries, a cultivator of letters in a hive of commercial 
industry. He is the author of the "Memorials of 
Liverpool," a model work of the kind, and would 
now have been occupying the maj'oralty chair in the 
town council but for unscrupulous aldermanic partisan- 
ship. 

At an early age young Picton was sent to what was 
then known as the High School, the upper branch of the 
Mechanics' Institution, where up to his sixteenth year 
he continued to make steady progress in all the ordi- 
nary, and some of the extraordinary, branches of stud}^ 
On leaving school, Picton entered his father's office, 
and for the next three years of his life diligently set 
himself to master the requirements of the paternal pro- 
fession, which, if he had continued to follow it, would 
pretty certainly have been to him a lucrative calling. 



258 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

Bat eventually he abandoned it for, as he believed, a 
higher, if less remunerative, occupation. 

Inspired from his youth up with philanthropic senti- 
ments, Picton had become an enthusiastic Sunday- 
school teacher ; and this experience led him to think of 
the ministry as a suitable sphere of action. He was 
never very orthodox in his religious beliefs : how 
could a mind capable of such profound speculation so 
be? But he had an eye to his main object, — the moral 
elevation of the poor and ignorant ; and he decided that 
the pastoral fulcrum of Independent Nonconformity was 
the best for his purpose, which ma/ be doubted. Ac- 
cordingly, at nineteen j^ears of age, he resumed his 
studies, and was entered simultaneously as a student of 
the Lancashire Independent College and of Owens Col- 
lege, Manchester. At the latter institution he stood 
first in classics at his final examination. In 1855 he 
took the master's degree in classics at London Univer- 
sity, and his academic studies were at an end. In 
1856 Mr. Picton 's career as an Independent minister 
began. The start was not promising. Suspected of 
heterodoxy, he was black-balled by the zealous shep- 
herds of the Manchester ministers' meeting, who ap- 
pear to have applied to him pretty much the now some- 
what obsolete argument, ' •• He is an atheist. Ecce sig- 
num! he doesn't believe in the Devil." 

*' Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and 
the Word." 

The orthodox pastors, however, had gone a step too 
far. Public opinion strongly manifested itself against 
such an act of barefaced intolerance ; and, by a suspen- 



JAMES ALLANSON PICTOl^. 259 

sion of rules, Mr. Picton was admitted to the pastorate 
of a congregation at Cheetham Hill, Manchester. 

His work there lay chiefly among the poor and desti- 
tute, for whom no man seemed to care. For the chil- 
dren he composed a model little ' ' Catechism of the 
Gospels ; ' ' and for the instruction of adults he and Mr. 
Arthur Mursell delivered weekly lectures on suitable 
subjects in the large room of a " ragged school." In 
1862, however, while thus beneficently engaged, the 
bull's-eye of orthodoxy was again turned on him. In 
connection with the centenary of ' ' Black Bartholo- 
mew," he published a discourse entitled " The Chris- 
tian Law of Progress," which was pronounced to be 
"of dangerous tendency." Thereupon the heretic re- 
moved to Leicester, where he succeeded to Dr. Legge's 
charge ; but his " tendencies," it is deplorable to relate, 
became worse instead of better. He fell into bad com- 
pany, particularly that of Mr. Coe, the Unitarian min- 
ister, and a powerful contingent of Radical working- 
men, whom he was in the habit of addressing in his 
chapel on Sunday afternoons on such unhallowed topics 
as "True Radicalism," "The Rights of Man," the 
death of Ernest Jones, the Jamaica outrages under 
Gov. Eyre, &c. As in Galilee, so in Leicester, the 
common people heard their teacher gladly ; but the un- 
common folks took a different view of the matter. 
What amounted to a vot« of want of confidence in Mr. 
Picton' s ministry was passed ; and, though very active 
steps were taken to prevent his departure from Leices- 
ter, the heresiarch felt constrained to turn his face to- 
wards oiu" metropolitan Babylon, which, with all her 
drawbacks, is generally large-hearted enough to wel- 
come able and earnest exponents of the most diverse ^ 
opinions, whether religious or political. 



260 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

In 1869 Mr. Picton succeeded to the pastorate of vSt. 
Thomas's Square, Hackney. Here his " tendencies '* 
were as bad as ever. He resumed his evil habit of 
Sunday lecturing, and the intelligent artisans of the 
neighborhood flocked to hear him. For two successive 
seasons the critical period of English history from the 
reign of Elizabeth to the revolution of 1688 was sub- 
jected to systematic criticism, and Mr. Picton was never 
more gratified than by the appreciation of solid instruc- 
tion exhibited by his auditors. A working-men's club 
was next started, — an institution which survives in the 
Borough of Hackney Working-men's Club, one of the 
most useful and prosperous undertakings of the kind in 
London. In 1870 preparations for the first London 
School Board election began, and Mr. Picton was among 
those who were solicited by the electors to offer them- 
selves as candidates. He complied ; and, though then 
necessarily but little known to the general London pub- 
lic, secured a seat through the devotion of his friends, 
more particularly those of the working-class. And the 
confidence then reposed in him was twice renewed with 
even greater emphasis by the constituency. For three 
years he filled a most responsible post on the committee 
of school management, before which are laid all the 
details of school aff'airs. 

Throughout an advocate of " education, secular, com- 
pulsory, and free," he was not unnaturall}^ believed 
by many besides mj^self to have deserted the Radical 
standard in favor of the present immoral ' ' compro- 
mise " of the religious difficulty, — the offspring of a 
foul liaison between church and chapel. But this, I 
am assured, is a misapprehension of Mr. Picton 's 
position. Finding that the compromisers, while pre- 



JAMES ALLAKSON PICTON. 261 

tending to exclude from the schoolrooms one catechism, 
had practically introduced as many creeds as the total 
number of sects to which board teachers belong, he 
exerted himself, with very limited success, to mitigate 
the evil by increasing the moral at the expense of the 
theological instruction. As it is, Mr. Picton, after 
nine years' hard work on the board, has been com- 
pelled, chiefly by the unsatisfactory state of his health, 
to seek a temporary respite from public duties ; and the 
minds of our children are meantime at the mercy of a 
motley crew of Romanist, Anglican, Ritualist, Baptist, 
Presbyterian, Unitarian, and atheist instructors, to 
make or mar at their good pleasure. The result is easy 
to predict, — a general sapping of the foundations, both 
of religion and morals. Birmingham in this matter 
has fallen low enough ; but she has not j^et reached the 
metropolitan depth of degradation. 

Some months ago Mr. Picton resigned his pastorate 
of the St. Thomas's- square congregation, and he is at 
present enjoying a well-merited rest from his labors. 
He does not intend to resume ministerial functions, I 
believe, but possibly to throw his entire energies into 
literar}^ and political pursuits. The gifted authoress of 
' ' The True Historj' of Joshua Davidson ' ' hazards the 
prediction that if Christ, who "went about doing good," 
were to re-appear on the earth in our day, it would be 
in the character of a Radical politician ; and, if it is 
meant simply that the platform and the press are now 
more powerful agencies for good or evil than the pulpit, 
it were hard to difl^er from her. Able, single-minded 
men like Picton are sadly wanted in Parliament ; and 
the churches will, as a rule, be glad to be rid of persons 
of such "dangerous tendencies." His political con- 



262 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

tributions to "The Fortnightl}'," " Macmillan," and 
" The Weekl}^ Dispatch," have, apart from his platform 
utterances, marked him out as a vigorous political 
thinker, on whom Eadical constituencies should keep 
an eye. He is a tried soldier in the ranks of democ- 
racy, who well deserves promotion at the people's 
hands, all the more so because he would be the last to 
seek it. 



IX. 

FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE. 

** To side with Truth is noble 
When we share her wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit 
And 'tis prosperous to be just." 

IT is now several years since I first chanced to meet 
Rear- Admiral Maxse at a Reform conference ; 
but, until quite recently, I have had no opportunity of 
verif3dng my early impressions. These, with certain 
reservations, were of a most favorable kind ; and they 
have been abundantly confirmed on closer acquaintance. 
Maxse is, what so very few Englishmen are, an ideal- 
ist in politics, a singularly poor hand at a compromise. 
Instead of accommodating his theory to the facts, he 
strives to bend the facts to his theory. With sailor-like 
single-mindedness, he has an awkward trick — awkward 
in a politician — of making use of language in order to 
express his meaning, instead of concealing it, as a good 
wire-puller should. His more candid political friends, 
consequently, complain that he cannot be got, even at 
critical electoral seasons, to recognize the advantage of 
calling a spade an elongated agricultural injplement. 
Hence the damning suspicion which obtains in certain 
quarters that the admiral is, with all his ability, " im- 
practicable." An Englishman, and not "practical"! 

263 



2G4 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

ITovv (lould such tx one hope to enter in at the strait 
^ate whicli leadcth to St. Stephen's? Impracticability 
were a grievous fault, and grievously did the gallant 
admiral answer it at Southampton in 18G8, and in the 
Tower Hamlets in 1874. But the fault, and I frankly 
ndinit its (^xist(uuH^ lay at least as much with the 
admiral's (Titics as with himself. If he were too much 
devoted to the ideal, they were too little. I agree, for 
once, with the prophet of "sweetness and light," that 
' '• Philistia has come to be thought by us as the true 
laud of promise. The born lover of ideas, the born 
hater of connnonplaces, must feel in this country that 
the sky over his head is of brass and iron." 

Now, Admiral Maxse is a born lover of ideas, a born 
hater of commonplaces, and he has never been adequate- 
ly able to apprehend how inaccessible are the vast 
majority of his countrymen to such sentiments. In 
this sense has he shown himself really impracticable. 
Among a quicker-witted and more logical people lilie 
the French, the chances are that he would have found 
himself quite at home. He ouglit to have known Eng- 
lishmen better. A London constituency, unlike a 
Parisian, will rdwa^'S prefer a gluttonous alderman with 
a marked aversion to the letter h to the profoundest 
l)liilosopher or to the truest philanthropist. Blessed is 
the cultivated Kadical who expects little of the average 
English elector, for he shall not be disappointed. 
Admiral Maxse, 1 have heard it said, has been seriousl}'" 
disappointed b}'' his poUtical experiences. Not disap- 
pointed, though disenchanted he has certainly been. 
But, lil^ie other true soldiers of democrac}", he has 
'' learned to labor and to wait." 

The disillusioning process is always a painful one for 



FEEDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE. 2G5 

a lofty, ardent nature like Maxse's ; but it is salutary 
all the same. It does not alter, by a hair's breadth, 
one's sense of duty, while it teaehes invaluable lessons 
of method and arJaptation in relation to the soeial 
environment. Progress, though inevitable, is seldom 
to be obtained by a coup. 

" We see dimly in the present what is small and what is great; 
Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron hchu of 
fate." 

Frederick Augustus Maxse was bom in London in 
the year 1833. He is now consequently in the full 
vigor of manhood, lithe of limb, and intrepid of car- 
riage, — every inch an " officer and a gentleman." lie 
is on the retired list ; but in an emergency he might 
well become the Blake of a second commonwealth. 
Speculative, perhaps somewhat chimerical, in religion 
and politics ; he is yet obviously a man of action, a 
bom commander of men. His father, James Maxse, 
was a Tory squire of the old schof^l, who harl inherited 
immense wealth, honorably acquired by the Maxse 
family as merchants in Bristol. He was one of the 
best heav3^-weight riders across country' of his gener- 
ation ; and, as for his feats, have they not been duly 
recorded by Nimro^l in connection with the famous 
Melton meets? On the mother's side the admiral is a 
Berkeley, his mother being Lady Caroline Maxse, 
daughter of the fifth Karl of Berkeley, llie Berkeleys 
have for generations been not^^d for great physical 
toughness and consistent jjolitical Whiggerj', the late 
"Ballot" I'^erkeley, M.P. for Bristfjl, being Maxse's 
uncle. Family j>olitics, however, never influenced the 
admiral's opinions in the least. He left home too 



266 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAIVIENT. 

early for that. He was afloat in his thirteenth year, 
having previously attended successively good private 
schools at Brighton, Hampton, and Paris. In Paris he 
acquired a mastery of the French language, which he 
has since found of the greatest benefit. His interest in 
French politics is at least as keen as in those of his 
own country. He is on terms of intimacy with nearly 
all the great men of the Third Republic, with whom he 
has so much more in common than with the ruck of 
English Liberals. 

Excellent busts of Hugo and Gambetta — the best I 
have seen — adorn his mantel-piece at The Chestnuts, 
Wimbledon, where all things bespeak the apple-pie 
order of the captain's cabin. One room is entirely 
hung with marine drawings, consisting chiefly of ships 
in which the owner had sailed. His first ship, which 
he joined on passing the examination then set to cadets, 
was " The Raleigh," Captain Sir Thomas Herbert. 
"The Raleigh" sailed for the South American station, 
where she remained for three years. There was a naval 
brigade on shore to protect the town of Montevideo ; 
and ' ' The Raleigh ' ' lay lazily off the coast to succor 
the marines if need were, "as idle as a painted ship 
upon a painted ocean." These three 3'ears Maxse as 
good as completely lost. He was supposed to learn 
navigation ; but the chaplain, who was his instructor, 
knew little or nothing about the subject which he was 
supposed to teach. 

In his sixteenth 3^ear he returned to England, but 
was speedily again afloat as midshipman in H.M.S. 
" Frolic," Captain Vansittart. " The Frolic " went to 
the Mediterranean. In 1852 he served as lieutenant 
on board H.M. sloop " Espiegle " in the West Indies, 



FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE 267 

whence he was invalided home just in time to take part 
in the Crimean war. He was appointed acting flag- 
lieutenant to Sir Edmund Lj^ons, and sailed for the 
scene of conflict. No sooner had the allied troops dis- 
embarked than his commanding officer recognized his 
special fitness to act as naval aide-de-camp to Lord 
Raglan. He was attached to the headquarter staff" in 
naval uniform, but with a cavalry sword. Prompt, dar- 
ing, intelligent, an opportunity for earning distinction 
was not long in occurring. He carried an important 
message to the fleet from headquarters, riding across 
the head of the Bay of Sebastopol, a distance of fifteen 
miles, through a territory alive with Cossacks and fugi- 
tive Russian regulars. Happily the gallant youth ac- 
complished his task in safety ; but it might well have 
been otherwise. So much was Lord Raglan impressed 
with this act of courage that he made it the subject of 
special commendation in an early despatch, and 3^oung 
Maxse was at once promoted to the rank of commander. 
The admiral, who is as modest as he is brave, makes 
light of the matter ; but the example was much needed, 
and it had its effect on older officers, who, it may be 
remembered, were at the time much hampered in the 
discharge of their military duties by "urgent private 
aff'airs." Maxse was subsequently engaged in the bat- 
tle of Inkermann, and witnessed "the six hundred" 
ride " into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell,'* 
at Balaklava ; his brother. Col. Fitzhardinge Maxse, 
acting on the occasion as aide-de-camp to Lord Cardi- 
gan. On the death of Lord Raglan, whose memory he 
fondly cherishes, he returned with his remains to Eng- 
land on board H.M.S. " Caradoc," and was shortly 
afterwards appointed to the command of the steam-cor- 



268 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

vette "Ariel" in the Mediterranean. Thereafter his 
promotion in the service was, and would have contin- 
ued, rapid ; but circumstances arose which tended mate- 
rially to divert his thoughts from purely professional 
objects. 

Maxse' s education had been purely naval. It ought, 
I think, to have been literary or philosophic. Ideas 
take possession of him with overpowering force. He 
is their servant rather than their master. He has read 
extensively and closely, but with passion, — I do not 
say prejudice. The consequence is, that he is at times 
apt to see objects in considerable disproportion, — a 
defect which a more systematic scholastic training in 
youth would have done much to cure. While yet a 
" middy," he had read star-ej^ed Shelley ; and the hu- 
manitarian impression made on his mind has never been 
effaced. The seeds of Radicalism were thus early laid, 
though they took some little time to germinate. 

" There is no wind but soweth seeds 
Of a more true and open life, 
Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds, 
With wayside beauty rife." 

Let US hear the admiral's own account of his conver- 
sion to the gospel of aggressive Eadicalism : ' ' M3'' 
profession has been that of a naval officer. I was 
brought up to the tune of ' Rule Britannia ' and ' Britons 
never shaU be slaves.' Ignorant of politics, when at 
sea I was indifferent to politics. If I had been poUed 
for my vote as a young lieutenant, I dare say I should 
have voted Conservative, indifferentism forming a main 
element of Conservatism. What made me an active 
politician was, when I came to live on shore, observing 



FEEDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE. 269 

the condition of the English agricultural laborers, I 
found that a large number of Britons loere slaves, — 
slaves to artificial oppressive circumstances, for the 
maintenance of which the governing classes stood, in 
my eyes, responsible ; and upon the discovery of this I 
determined, that, if during the whole of my life I could 
carry but a single handful of earth towards the foun- 
dation of a better state of society, that handful I would 
carry." Accordingly, the admiral, acting on his well- 
worn maxim, "People who do not care for politics do 
not care for their fellow- creatures," has twice, as has 
been said, sought the suffrages of popular constitu- 
encies. 

At Southampton, in 1868, he addressed himself more 
particularly to questions affecting the land and educa- 
tion. He is a fluent, forcible speaker, too earnest to 
be amusing, but always attractive because instructive. 
You feel that his mind is made up, and that what he 
says he will infallibly perform. But he does not see 
the by-play of electioneering ; and, from sheer honesty 
of purpose and detestation of chicane, he falls into the 
most obvious traps laid for him by the enemies of his 
cause. "Leading questions" are put to him, which 
he answers with ruinous candor. He knows nothing 
of the Scotsman's art of answering one inconvenient 
question by asking another. He seems never even to 
have profited by the illustrious example of Mr. Glad- 
stone's " three courses," which intimates to the caviller, 
" You pays your money, and you gets your choice." It 
is seemingly impossible to get into the admiral's head 
what is almost an axiom in electioneering; viz., that 
the shortest line that can be drawn between two politi- 
cal points is often a mighty circumbendibus. Neither 



270 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

at Southampton nor in the Tower Hamlets did the gal- 
lant admiral evince the smallest appreciation of these 
elementary campaigning truths. 

In the Tower Hamlets, though personally an abstain- 
er, he took strong ground against the Permissive Bill ; 
and he would have nothing to do with the publicans. 
Both parties, of course, voted against him. Again : 
Liberal churchmen would have none of him because of 
his strong advocacy of disestablishment ; while the 
Nonconformists, to their everlasting discredit, threw 
him completel}^ overboard because of his advanced 
views regarding the opening of museums on Sundays. 
The committee of the Tower Hamlets Nonconformist 
Liberal Association had actually the indecency to issue 
a manifesto during the contest, wherein, after premising 
that they had carefulty considered the claims of the 
various candidates, they went on to say, " Captain 
Maxse, b}'' his advocacy of the opening of museums on 
Sunda}^ and his S3anpathies in favor of ' home rule,' 
precluded a consideration of his name." This being 
the enlightened verdict of Little Bethel, the defeat of 
the Radical candidate is not, perhaps, much to be won- 
dered at, especially when it is added that only seventeen 
thousand electors took the trouble to go to poll for five 
candidates out of a constituenc}^ of thirtj^-two thousand. 
Some of these ' ' fixes ' ' the gallant admiral could never 
be put in again ; the advocates of the Permissive Bill, 
for example, having themselves abandoned then- meas- 
ure, and in its stead substituted " local option," a 
change of front which will enable Admnal Maxse and 
many other genuine Radicals in future to render them 
willing aid. By way of equivalent it will be their 
duty to help to keep off" the land-sharks that prey on 



FEEDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE. 271 

candidates of such exceptional honesty of purpose as 
the admiral. His high courage, resolute purpose, and 
lofty enthusiasm would be a very clear addition of 
strength to the flaccid Radicalism of St. Stephen's. 
His failings outside Parliament would very closely re- 
semble virtues inside. 

Admiral Maxse's name is closely identified with 
several questions of vital interest to the nation, more 
particularly with electoral reform, land-tenure reform, 
religious equality, national education, the enfranchise- 
ment of the agricultural laborers, and woman suffrage. 
He has probed the inequalities of our representative 
system to the core ; and if there be any one who still 
believes in the delusion that this is a self-governed 
land, and has any desire to know the naked truth, 
I cannot do better than recommend htm to peruse 
Maxse's pamphlet, " Whether the Minority of Electors 
should be represented by a Majority in the House of 
Commons." Thirty thousand electors, he shows, in 
small constituencies, elect forty-four members of Par- 
liament, while five hundred and forty-six thousand in 
large boroughs return only thirty-five. Thirty thousand 
electors thus outvote five hundred and forty-six thou- 
sand. At the last general election eighteen thousand 
electors of Manchester, who recorded their votes in 
favor of a candidate, failed to return him ; while eigh- 
teen thousand electors, living in petty boroughs or 
rural constituencies, seated no fewer than thirty hon- 
orable members ! Fourteen thousand electors in Buck- 
inghamshire return eight members ; fifty thousand in 
Lambeth have but two allotted to them. 

Commenting on such stupendous anomalies, the 
admiral indignantly observes, " The splendid outcome 



272 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

of our parliamentary system is that a minority of 
electors appoint a majority of members of Parliament, 
and the majority of electors appoint their minorit}^ to 
be steadHy outvoted and beaten ; and all the while 
statesmen and journalists vie with one another in 
national brag, and tell the deluded people that they 
are blessed above all other peoples in their institutions 
and in their laws. And the story is circulated so 
persistently that at last, as people are ultimately con- 
vinced by a perpetual advertisement, they think that it 
is even so." 

During the autumn of 1874, chiefly through the 
exertions of the admiral, was formed the Electoral 
Reform Association. It had for its chief object the 
equalization of constituencies, and started with the 
promise of a most useful career. It made shipwreck, 
however, unfortunately, over the question of woman 
suffrage, against which Admiral Maxse set his face 
with, I think, most injudicious vigor. It is a problem 
which may be safely left for such good3^-goody senti- 
mental people to solve, in their own fashion, as we see 
voting for incompetent women in preference to compe- 
tent men in school-board elections. I have read with 
some curiosity the admiral's " Woman Suffrage, the 
Counterfeit and the True : Reasons for opposing Both," 
and can only feel astonishment that he should have 
been at so much pains to argue so stoutly either on the 
one side or the other. Female suffrage would have 
done very well if only the admiral had had the good 
sense to let it alone. It is a topic which females and 
feminine men should be permitted wholly to monopolize. 
It will please them, and do no one much injur}^ 

As a member of the executive council of the Land- 



FREDEEICK AUGUSTUS MAXSB. 273 

Tenure Reform Association, Maxse did yeoman's ser- 
vice. He lectured on the subject in various towns, and 
always with effect. At the great public meeting held 
in Exeter Hall in March, 1873, presided over by the 
late John Stuart Mill, Admiral Maxse moved the first 
resolution, and anticipated in his speech much that is 
now being forced on public attention by the agricultural 
distress which has set in with such severity. The as- 
sociation was perhaps before its time somewhat ; but its 
attitude was prophetic. Maxse' s best known pamphlet, 
which has had a deservedly large circulation, is entitled 
"The Causes of Social Revolt," being the substance 
of a lecture delivered in London, Portsmouth, Bradford, 
Nottingham, and other towns. It will repay careful 
perusal. 

It is not often that Admiral Maxse has concerned 
himself about foreign affairs ; but his letters to ' ' The 
Morning Post" on "the German yoke" in Alsace- 
Lorraine were most valuable contributions towards the 
proper understanding of a nefarious ' ' imperial ' ' pro- 
ceeding, which, it is safe to prophesy, will yet cause 
much blood and many tears to be shed. The bravest 
of the brave and a Crimean hero, he has been through- 
out our ' ' spuited foreign policy ' ' a steady anti- Jingo 
and a foe to militarism. Indeed, wherever the admiral 
has erred, it has been on the side of a frankness rare in 
English public life. With his aristocratic and profes- 
sional connections he might years ago have entered 
Parliament either as a nominee of the Whigs or the 
Tories. Instead of that, "he humbly joined him to 
the weaker side ' ' with the usual result. His choice of 
sides is an eloquent and spontaneous testimony to the 
grievances endured by the English people at the hands 



274 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

of an oppressive oligarchy. Such men as Frederick 
Augustus Maxse are an honor to any class, but belong 
to none. Their capacity for self-sacrifice is then- true 
patent of nobility, and that no sovereign can either con- 
fer or take away. 



X. 

THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT. 

" They are slaves who dare not he 
In the right with two or three." 

"TTTHEN a patrician like the Hon. Auberon Edward 
V V William Molyneux Herbert comes to figure as 
a strenuous people's tribune, it is not unnatural that 
his motives should be subjected to searching analysis. 
Of thorns men do not ordinarily gather figs, nor of aris- 
tocratic bramble-bushes gather they democratic grapes. 
Nevertheless, when it does happen that grapes are pro- 
duced in such circumstances, they are sometimes of the 
choicest quality. They are like the strawberry that has 
ripened under the nettle. In the society of a man like 
Herbert you feel that noblesse oblige is not quite an 
empty phrase. There is a certain chivalry in his Radi- 
calism, a knight-errantry if you will, — a combination 
of courage and courtesy, gentleness, and independence, 
which it would be hard indeed to match in these unro- 
mantic days. 

"For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
Of loyal nature and of noble mind." 

By one or two critics I have been accused of fanatical 
abhorrence of aristocracy ; but it is not so. On the 
contrary, I should say of such men as Herbert, "I 

275 



276 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 



have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." I 
could name several members of his order who, for pur- 
ity of motive, sense of justice, and genuine love of 
their fellow-men, have no superiors, or perhaps equals, 
in the ranks of those whose political principles may be 
said by comparison to bear interest. The aristocracy 
of England has never been absolutely without some 
redeeming representatives. If it had been wholly nox- 
ious it could not have survived so long. But it was 
founded in conquest and rapine ; and it has all along 
clung to birth, and not merit, as the chief justification 
of its existence. The House of Lords is the most 
extraordinary anachronism in the political world. The 
idea of a hereditary legislator is even more absurd than 
that of a hereditary butcher or baker ; and, if English- 
men had had au}^ sense of the ludicrous, the peerage 
would have been laughed, if not kicked, out of exist- 
ence long ago. Notwithstanding some appearances to 
the contrary, the baronage of England, Mr. Herbert 
maintains, and I agree with him, is now as effete as the 
Sublime Porte. There is but one thing they can now 
do with advantage, — efface themselves as speedily as 
possible, and fall into line in the great army of democ- 
racj^, which, often retarded in its advance, never really 
turns back; which, "like death, never gives up a 
victim." 

When an aristocrat by birth becomes a democrat by 
reflection, when a royalist by association becomes a re- 
publican by S3^mpath3^ the process of conversion can 
never be without interest. Those of us who, like my- 
self, were at no time any thing if not Radical, are apt 
to set but too little store by principles which one in Mr. 
Herbert's position prizes lilie so much treasure-trove. 



THE HON. AUBEEON HEEBERT. 277 

Converse with Mr. Herbert on such matters, and you 
are made to feel as if you had been entertaining angels 
unawares. The ethical superiority of the Radical creed 
which 3^ou may have assumed, he will demonstrate to 
you with a freshness of logic and a fervor of conviction 
that I have never heard surpassed ; not that I agree 
with all or nearly all of the practical conclusions at 
which he has arrived. Of some of these I shall have 
a few words to say by and b}^ It is the frank, gener- 
ous spirit, void of the faintest suspicion of arriere pen- 
see, in which he approaches every political problem, 
that is the great matter. 

Auberon Herbert was born in London in 1838, his 
father being Henry, third Earl of Carnarvon, and his 
mother Henrietta Anna Howard, niece of the twelfth 
Duke of Norfolk. The father of the first Earl of Car- 
narvon, the Hon. Major-Gen. William Herbert, was a 
son of the eighth Earl of Pembroke. Henry, the first 
earl, was raised to the baronage as Lord Porchester of 
High Clere, Southampton, in 1780, and in 1793 he was 
made Earl of Carnarvon. He was a gentleman of 
intrepid bearing, and is said to have earned his claim 
to a peerage by drawing his sword and threatening to 
run Lord George Gordon, of riotous memory, through 
the body unless he undertook on the spot to withdraw 
the mob from the precincts of St. Stephen's. The 
second earl afiected Whiggery ; the third, the author 
of "Portugal and Galicia," — an authoritative book 
of travel of no inconsiderable literary merit, — was a 
Tory ; while the fourth, the late colonial secretary (Mr. 
Herbert's brother) , whose resignation was the first clear 
intimation to the country that Beaconsfield and the 
Jingoes in the cabinet meant serious mischief, it is 



278 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PABLIAMENT. 

hoped will eventually sever his connection entu-ely with 
the unconstitutional party, and join the Liberal party, 
with which he is so much more in sympath}^ 

Mr. Herbert is married to Lad}'^ Florence Amabel, a 
daughter of the sixth Earl of Cowper. She is a woman 
as remarkable for simplicity of manners as for the vigor 
of her intellect and the kindness of her heart. If Mr. 
Herbert is speculative, she is the incarnation of common 
sense. Tennyson's daughter of a hundred earls was 
not one to be desired. It is diifercnt with Lady Flor- 
ence. She has fewer airs than the opulent green-grocer's 
wife round the corner, who might learn much from her 
in domesticity. With her, as with her husband, no- 
blesse oblige. 

Mr. Herbert's early education was superintended by 
tutors, to the personal rather than to the scholastic 
influence of some of whom he was much indebted. In 
1857 he proceeded to Oxford, where he became a stu- 
dent of St. John's College, but studied steeple-chasiiig 
and kindred pursuits more than the ancient classics or 
any other kind of literature. The spirit of adventure 
was strong within him, and after two years of desultory 
reading he determined to enter the sa'my so as to see 
service abroad. Accordingly, in 1859, he joined the 
Seventh Hussars at Canterbury, and subsequently 
served in India for a period of six months, attaining 
the rank of lieutenant. Here, perversely enough, he 
was as studious as at Oxford he had been idle. He 
edited a little magazine called ^'The Crusader," and 
began to qualify himself for staff duties. With this 
object in view, he returned to Oxford to complete his 
university curriculum, and graduated B.C.L. in 18()2. 
On taking his degTce, not caiing to resume his militaiy 



THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT. 279 

career, he devoted himself to university tuition, and 
subsequently obtained a " Founders' Kin " fellowship. 

In 1864 the man of " blood and iron " had matured 
his first great crime by procuring the invasion of 
Schleswig-Holstein by an irresistible Austro-Prussian 
army. Mr. Herbert, deeply sympathizing with the 
gallant Danes, abandoned his academical pursuits, and 
hastened to the Dybbol lines in order to encourage the 
defenders by succoring their wounded. He rendered 
valuable aid, was oftener than once under fire, and 
became a great favorite both with officers and men. 
The government subsequently signalized its gratitude 
by conferring on him, for his labor of love, the order of 
the Danneborg. The distinction was otherwise well 
merited ; for Mr. Herbert pleaded the Danish cause 
with the English people in a series of " Letters from 
Sonderborg " in a way that would have stirred their 
hearts to active intervention if any thing could have 
aroused them from their apathy. When England is 
prepared to fight innumerable campaigns, it is, alas ! 
not done on behalf of Danes, but of Turks, — not for 
freedom, but for despotism. 

The Sonderborg letters are replete with manly feeling 
and shrewd military observation. They have been re- 
published in a little volume entitled ' ' The Danes in 
Camp," which every student of liismarckian rascality 
ought to peruse. I make but two brief extracts, illus- 
trative of its tone: "As you will easily conceive, the 
conduct of England has placed neither our nation nor 
our policy in a favorable light. The Danes are sorely 
hurt at our desertion of their fortunes. They feel it tJie 
more acutely because between them and England there 
has existed a silent brotherhood. English is the laa- 



280 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PAELIAMENT. 

guage which is taught in their schools and colleges, and 
which forms a regular part of their education. Their 
customs, their feelings, then- ways of thought, their 
character, and sometimes their very look, are English. 
To English literature they have turned in the attempt 
to oppose it to that of Germany. English is the lan- 
guage which they seem to have chosen even in prefer- 
ence to French or German, which would have afforded 
a better link of communication between themselves and 
the nations of that great continent on whose outer edge 
then" fortunes are cast, and to which they cling desper- 
ately, with nothing but the bravery and the stern virtues 
of the old Norse race to maintain them on their jiarrow 
foothold." 

"Dark as are the clouds, and cruel as is the game 
which is being played out, I am deteimined to remain 
constant to my belief that I have both visited Arcadia 
and seen a ' patriot army.' Do you blame me in this 
nineteenth century for cherishing two such illusions, if 
illusions they are ? ' ' 

While I am about it, I may as well finish the record 
of Mr. Herbert's warlike experiences. No sooner had 
he left the Dybbol lines than he sought those before 
Richmond, where the silent, inflexible Grant had at last 
got secession firmly by the throat. The taciturn gen- 
eral gave him a kindly reception, but was not to be 
" drawn." Not a man on the staff could move him 
to the faintest demonatrativeness. At last a dispute 
arose as to the distance between two places. One offi- 
cer said five miles, another four, another six. " Three 
and a half," interjected Grant with a tone of decision. 
He alone was right. The general had been drawn, and 
everybody was satisfied. President Lincoln, to whom 



THE HON. AUBEKON HERBERT. 281 

Mr. Herbert was introduced at Washington, impressed 
him very differently. Sagacity and honesty were his 
obvious characteristics. His implicit trust in Grant 
made Grant be trusted. The general had many ene- 
mies, some of whom accused him of intemperance. 
" Does Grant get drunk? " asked the President of one 
of these maligners. ' ' They say so. " — " Are you quite 
sure he gets drunk? " — " Quite." The President 
paused, and then gravely ejaculated, " I wonder where 
he buys his whiskey." — " And why do j^ou want to 
know?" was the astonished rejoinder. "Because, if 
I did," replied Lincoln, " I'd send a barrel or two of it 
round to some other generals I know of. ' ' 

When Mr. Herbert went to America he was still a 
Conservative. What he saw and heard, however, of 
the great republic was not without its influence on his 
future conduct. "The easy, powerful current of life, 
the mixture of classes, the respect shown to all, made a 
deep impression on me. Eeady to see all the faults of 
democratic government, I saw them, and yet felt the 
power and depth of tlie tide as if I had passed from 
some narrow lake out on the sea." 

In the Franco-German war Mr. Herbert was once 
more a ministering angel to the wounded. " When in 
the Luxembourg train, I heard the sound of firing, 
jumped out, took my place in a coach going to a nearer 
point, saw the battle of Sedan going on from a rising 
ground, collected some lint, and, with a large pitcher of 
water, started for the field. It was a long distance, and 
I found myself for the greater part of my road abso- 
lutely alone. The villages through which I passed 
were almost entirely deserted. In the afternoon the 
firing ceased. It was nightfall before I reached the 



282 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

field. Some German officers asked for a drink of my 
water, but considerately accepted my excuse that it 
was for the wounded. ... In the morning I found a 
country house full of wounded French who had not yet 
been taken to hospital. I spent the whole morning in 
appl3'ing the few simple lessons I had received in wash- 
ing wounds and bandaging, and I think the belief that 
they had a doctor amongst them, which I took care not 
to disturb, did more good to them than my bandages. 
It was a prett}^ little country house ; and, as I tore up 
sheets and curtains for what I wanted, I could not help 
thinking of the return of the luckless owners, who, 
however, perhaps came back with an exceedingly grate- 
ful feeling that any house at all remained to them." 
This simple narrative admu-ably illustrates the leading 
features of the writer's character, — his self-reliance and 
his humanity. 

To come now to Mr. Herbert's political acts an^i 
principles, which should have been reached sooner. 
He started life, to be sure, as a Tory ; but I cannot 
discover that he had ever the root of the matter really 
in him. He called himself a Conservative long after 
he had become more liberal than most Liberals. At 
Oxford, however, he must have had the reputation 
of being a sound Conservative ; for he was elected pres- 
ident of the Union Debating Society over a Liberal 
opponent, and in 1865 he stood unsuccessfully for 
Newport, Isle of Wight, in the " Liberal-Conserva- 
tive " interest. In 1866 a safe Conservative seat was 
ofiered to him ; but he had resolved to throw overboard 
the Irish Church, and with the Irish Chm'ch necessarily 
went the safe seat. More decided steps followed. He 
went down to Newport, and frankly told his old friends 



THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT. 283 

that he could no longer conscientious^ act with them ; 
and, what testified still more strongly to the sincerity 
of his motives, he resigned his private secretaryship 
under Sir Stafford Northcote, and engaged in the less 
lucrative occupation of furthering various working-class 
movements in which Mr. Hodgson Pratt took an inter- 
est. The conversion was complete, but not sudden. 
It had been produced by several considerations, the 
cumulative effects of which were simply uTcsistible. 
On his way to serve in India he had stopped long 
enough in Venice to take sides against the Austrian 
tjTant ; and on his return to Oxford the writings of 
Mill, more particularly his famous treatise on "Lib- 
erty," Buckle's "History of Civilization," and the per- 
sonal influence of Goldwin Smith, had the effect, so to 
spealii, of regenerating his entu'c political nature. 
When he made the final plunge into Radicalism he felt 
like an escaped prisoner on the first day of freedom. 

In 1868 he made a gallant but unsuccessful effort to 
wi'est a seat from the Tories in Berkshire. It was not 
long, however, before a much more suitable constitu- 
ency sought and secured his services. In 1870 he was 
returned for Nottingham by a large Radical majority, 
and remained in Parliament till the dissolution of 1874, 
when, to the disappointment of many enthusiastic 
friends and supporters, he retired from the representa- 
tion of the borough. His health had suffered, and his 
notions of the true functions of a legislature had in the 
interval undergone a change of which he could not at 
the time foresee the consequences. He required leisure 
to think them out. But of this more anon. 

In Parliament Mr. Herbert was not, generally speak- 
ing, 2i grata persona. He was too conscientious to be 



284 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

a good party man, too Radical all round both for Con- 
servatives and Liberals*. The cut and color of his 
coats, moreover, scandalized honorable members. 
They were light green when they ought to have been 
of a more sombre hue, and it was oftener than once 
debated by certain of the weaker brethren whether the 
speaker's attention might not with advantage be drawn 
to the irreverent attire of the member for Nottingham. 
This, however, was not Herbert's greatest enormity. 
In seconding Sir Charles Dilke's famous motion re- 
specting the civil list, and commenting on the justly 
suspected frauds connected therewith, Mr. Herbert, 
while alluding to the actual occupant of the throne with 
all the superstitious reverence which a degraded public 
opinion could possibly exact, had yet the manhood to 
affirm his conviction that a republic is preferable to a 
monarchy in a community such as ours. Thereupon 
one honorable member " spied strangers in the gallery,',' 
and had the press ejected, while a noble lord manifest- 
ed his loyalty to the crown by " cock- crowing " ! So 
great was the uproar, raised chiefly by the ' ' party of 
order," that for the space of an hour the member for 
Nottingham could scarcely ejaculate more than a word 
or two at a time. The speaker pronounced the scene 
the most "painful" he had ever witnessed; j^et I 
have never heard any one allege that Herbert uttered 
one untrue or offensive syllable in his speech. The 
fault was entirely with the fault-finders. It was the 
old story, — Great is Diana of the Ephesians : the 
silversmiths were all in arms. Howbeit, — 

*' They have rights who dare maintain them: 
We are traitors to our sires, 



THE HON. ATJBERON HEBBERT. 285 

Smothering in their holy ashes 

Freedom's new-lit altar fires. 
Shall Ave make their creed our jailer ? 

Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets 

Steal the funeral lamps away 
To light up the martyr fagots 

Eound the prophets of the day ? " 

The religious provisions of the Scotch Education Bill 
of 1872 Mr. Herbert criticised with commendable can- 
dor, and a rare appreciation of the evil effects of eccle- 
siastical uniformity on the character of the Scottish 
people. The justice of his strictures, to which no mem- 
ber from Scotland dared give expression, was gratefull}^ 
acknowledged b}'^ enlightened Scottish opinion. 

In 1873, in criticising the army estimates, Mr. Her- 
bert took occasion to impugn the organization and 
question the efficiency of our standing arm}^ He 
proved by irrefutable statistics that the British army is 
consumed by loathsome disease, and thinned by inces- 
sant desertion to an extent that is almost incredible. 
'' Officers and gentlemen," needless to say, were horri- 
fied, more especially when they were told by a member, 
who might be regarded as one of themselves, that a 
territorial citizen force, a simple extension of the vol- 
unteer system, would be more effective in the field than 
a standing army, and incomparably less costly to the 
British taxpayer. 

Mr. Herbert's kindly nature was never seen to great- 
er advantage than in the untiring efforts he made ' ' to 
provide for the protection of wild birds during the 
breeding-season. ' ' He set forth the virtues of thrushes, 
blackbirds, jays, and sparrows with something like pa- 



286 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

ternal pride, and begged the House, with a genuine 
ardor which aroused its sympathy, "to have compas- 
sion on creatures which were so entirely within their 
power. ' ' So true it is that — 

" He prayetli well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast." 

Since Herbert has been out of Parliament he has 
devoted himself to agricultural pursuits ; but no serious 
call to public duty has found him wanting. The Bulga- 
rian atrocities filled his mind with horror. He came to 
London, and " lobbied " for weeks in order to put cour- 
age into the breasts of tunid Liberal members. The 
St. James's Hall conferences owed him much for the 
success which attended them ; and he gave a striking 
proof of his personal intrepidity by presiding at the 
second anti-Jingo meeting in HjTle Park, where the 
herculean strength of Mr. Bradlaugh with difficulty' 
availed to save himself from a violent end. 

As a politician Mr. Herbert has latterly adopted 
the ultra-individualist theories of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
and started a "Personal Rights and S elf-Help Asso- 
ciation " as the outward manifestation of his new faith. 
The Personal Rights Association abhors socialism in 
every form. What is socialism? It exists whenever 
the state does for individuals what they might volun- 
tarily achieve for themselves. Thej^ are the best laws 
which repeal laws. The church as by law established 
is a socialist institution, — down with it. National 
education is socialist, — down with it. The poor law 
is socialist, — repeal it. The liquor laws are socialist, 
— away with them. Factorj^ legislation is socialist, — 
undo it. What is wanted is absolute free trade in 



THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT. 287 

every thing, — religion, ignorance, whiskey, destitu- 
tion, and over- work. The hotter war, the sooner peace. 
The individual must save himself. By throwing away 
the state crutch is it alone possible to learn to walk. 
The true sphere of government is merely to preserve 
the internal and external police of the realm. When 
more is attempted it is an illegitimate and baneful 
exercise of authority, an arrest of progress, a stunting 
of the national growth. Either the state must do 
every thing for the individual, or the individual must 
do every thing for himself. Neck or nothing ! It is 
the ideal social democracy of Germany against the 
ideal individualist democracy of England. Unfortu- 
nately the problem is complicated, and will remain 
insoluble until monarchy and aristocracy have disap- 
peared from both countries. A privileged aristocracy 
at the top of the social pj^ramid necessai'ily implies 
protected poverty at the base. Deal with the cause 
before you meddle with the effect. When some simple 
form of republican government, based on universal 
suffrage, such as Mr. Herbert desires, has been at- 
tained, it will be time enough seriousl}^ to concern 
ourselves about the intrinsic consequences of social- 
ism and individualism. With a complete democracy, 
socialist and individualist conundrums will solve them- 
selves. Let Mr. Herbert seek fii'st the republic, and 
all else will be added to him. 



XI. 

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 

*' The Politics are base; 
The Letters do not cheer; 
And 'tis far in the deeps of History 
The voice that speaketh clear." 

AMONG eminent English Radicals, Freeman the 
historian occupies a unique place. He goes 
forward by going backward. He is a Radical because 
he is a Conservative. He is a democrat because he is 
a student of antiquity. Addressing the Liverpool In- 
stitute in November last, he described himself as 
" belonging to that old-fashioned sect that dreads noth- 
ing so much as the change of novelt}'." It is his boast 
to be one of the trusty few who ' ' cleave to the old 
faith that there is something in the wisdom of our fore- 
fathers, and that the right thing is to stand fast in the 
old paths." The Tories are dangerous innovators. 
Our political progress has consisted in setting aside 
' ' the leading subtleties which grew up from the thir- 
teenth centmy to the seventeenth," and reverting " to 
the plain common sense of the eleventh or tenth, and of 
times far earlier." The most primitive institutions of 
the English race were based on universal suffrage. The 
Swiss Republic is the oldest polity in Europe, and the 
best. In all history there is hardly a more picturesque 
288 



EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 289 

chapter than that with which Freeman's " Growth of 
the English Constitution ' ' opens : ' ' Year by year, on 
certain spots among the dales and mountain-sides of 
Switzerland, the traveller who is daring enough to wan- 
der out of beaten tracks, and to make his journey at 
unusual seasons, may look on a sight such as no other 
corner of the earth can any longer set before him. He 
may there gaze and feel what none can feel but those 
who have seen with their own eyes, what none can feel 
in its fulness but once in a lifetime, — the thrill of look- 
ing for the first time face to face on freedom in its 
purest and most ancient form. He is there in a land 
where the oldest institutions of our race — institutions 
which may be traced up to the earliest times of which 
history or legend gives us .any glimmering — still live 
on in their primeval freshness. He is in a land where 
an immemorial freedom — a freedom only less eternal 
than the rocks that guard it — puts to shame the boasted 
antiquity of kingly d3aiasties, which by its side seem 
but as innovations of yesterday. There jeai by year, 
on some bright morning of the springtide, the sover- 
eign people, not intrusting its rights to a few of its own 
numbers, but discharging them itself in the majesty of 
its own corporate person, meets in the open market- 
place or in the green meadow at the mountain's foot to 
frame the laws to which it yields obedience as its own 
work, to choose the rulers whom it can afford to greet 
with reverence as drawing their commission from itself. 
Such a sight there are but few Englishmen who have 
seen. To be among those few I reckon among the 
highest privileges of my life. 

' ' Let me ask you to follow me in spiiit to the very 
home and birthplace of freedom, to the land where we 



290 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

need not myth find fable to add aught to the fresh and 
gUiddonuig feeling with which we for the first time 
tread the soil and drink in the air of the immemorial 
democracy of Uri. It is one of the opening days of 
Ma}^ ; it is the morning of Sunda3% for men there deem 
that the better day the better deed. They deem that 
the Creator cannot be more truly honored than in using 
in his fear and in his presence the highest of the gifts 
which he has bestowed on man. But deem not, that, 
because the day of Christian worship is chosen for the 
great yearly assembly of a Christian commonwealth, 
the more du'ect sacred duties of the da}' ai-e forgotten. 
Before we in our luxurious island have lifted ourselves 
from our beds, the men of the mountains — Catholic 
and I'rotestant alike — have alread}^ paid the morning 
worship in God's temple. The}' have heai-d the mass 
of the priest, or they have listened to the sennon of the 
pastor, before some of us liave awakened to the fact that 
the morn of the holy day has come. And when I saw 
men thronging the crowded church., or kneeling, for 
want of space within, on the bare ground beside the 
open door ; and, when I saw them mai'ching thence to 
do the highest duties of men and citizens, I could hai'dly 
forbear thinking of the saying of Holy Writ, that * where 
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' 

'' From the mai'ket-place of Altdorf, the little capital 
of the canton, the procession makes its wa}^ to the 
place of meeting at Bozlingen. First marches the little 
arn\y of the canton, an army whose weapons never can 
be used save to drive back an invader from their land. 
Over their heads floats the banner, the bull's head of 
Uri, the ensign which led the men to victor}^ on the 
fields of Sempach and Morgai'ten ; and before them all. 



EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 291 

on the shoulders of men clad in a garb of ages past, 
are borne the famous horns, the spoils of the wild bull 
of ancient daj^s, the very horns whose blast struck such 
dread into the fearless heart of (yharles of Burgundy. 
Then, with their lictors before them, come the magis- 
trates of the commonwealth on horseback, the chief 
magistrate, the landamman, with his sword by his side. 
The people follow the chiefs whom tlujy have chosen to 
the place of meeting, — a circle in a green meadow, with 
a pine forest rising above their heads, and a mighty 
spur of the mountain range facing them on the other 
side of the valle^^ 'J'he multitude of freemen take 
their seats around the chief ruler of the commonwealth, 
whose term of office comes that day to an end. 'J 'he 
assembly opens. A short space is first given to prayer, 
silent pra3xr, offered up by each man in the temple of 
(>od's own rearing. Then comes the business of the 
day. Jf changes in the law are demanded, they are 
then laid before the vote of the assembly, in which 
each citizen of full age has an equal vote and an equal 
right of speech. The yearly magistrates have now 
discharged all their duties : their term of office is at an 
end. The trust which has been placed in their hands 
falls back into the hands of those by whom it was 
given, — into the hands of the sovereign people. The 
chief of the commonwealth, now such no longer, leaves 
his seat of oflSce and takes his place as a simple citizen 
in the ranks of his fellows. It rests with the free will 
of the assembly to call him back to his chair of office, 
or to set another there in his stead. 

' ' Men who have neither looked into the history of 
the past, nor yet troubled themselves to learn what 
happens year by year in their own age, are fond of de- 



292 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

claiming against the caprice and ingratitude of the peo- 
ple, and of telling ns that under a democratic govern- 
ment neither men nor measures can remain for an hour 
unchanged. The witness alike of the present and of 
the past is an answer to baseless theories lilie these. 
The spirit which made democratic Athens year by year 
bestow her highest offices on the patrician Pericles and 
the re-actionary Phokion still lives in the democracies 
of Switzerland, and alike in the Landesgemeinde of 
Uri and in the Federal Assembly at Berne. The min- 
isters of kings, whether despotic or constitutional, may 
vainly envy the same tenure of office which falls to 
those who are chosen to rule b}^ the voice of the peo- 
ple. Alike in the whole confederation and in the sin- 
gle canton, re-election is the rule : the rejection of the 
outgoing magistrate is the rare exception. The Land- 
amman of Uri, whom his countr3'men have raised to 
the seat of honor, and who has done nothing to lose' 
their confidence, need not fear that when he has gone 
to the place of meeting in the pomp of office his place 
in the march homeward will be transferred to another 
against his will." 

In the foregoing extract the reader has Freeman at 
his best, — Freeman the Liberal politician and Freeman 
the devout Christian. His politics and his religion, 
like Gladstone's, inspire all his writings. His life has 
been one strenuous endeavor to vindicate by precept 
and example the noblest traditions of the one and of 
the other. As a man of Teutonic stock, he has at all 
times talcen strong ground against unhappy Celts ; and, 
as a follower of Christ, he has assuredl}^ never shown 
undue compassion for the disciples of Mahomet. Yet 
it were hard to tax Mr. Freeman with prejudice. The 



EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 293 

strength and honesty of his intellect no man can ques- 
tion. Of historians he is the most industrious and ac- 
curate, and he is by no means deficient in imagination. 
In this last quality he is of course immeasurably in- 
ferior to a prose poet like Carlyle ; but there is compen- 
sation. He has never sunk a Vengeur, and I could 
scarcely conceive of him having the philological credulity 
to connect " king " with '' cunning man." History is 
but past politics, just as politics are present history. 
This cardinal truth Mr. Freeman, as a narrator of 
events, fully apprehends ; and this it is that gives such 
lucidity and value to all his writings. He has, more- 
over, moral courage of the highest order, and admira- 
ble tenacity of purpose. To his own mind his objects 
are invariably clear ; and he takes the most direct, if 
sometimes not the most pleasant, means of clarifying 
the mintJs of others. For such constitutionally inaccu- 
rate persons as Beaconsfield and Froude he has, like 
experience, proved himself a hard taskmaster ; but the 
public has reaped the benefit of his occasionally " bru- 
tal frankness." 

Yet with all these varied qualifications, moral and 
intellectual, Mr. Freeman is not without his limita- 
tions. His mind is a peculiarly English mind, strong 
in facts and shrewd at inferences, but weak and timid 
in the application of first principles. Original specula- 
tors like Spencer or Bain might logically overthrow the 
very foundations of his political and religious beliefs, 
and he would never know or care. He is an accom- 
lolished specialist in letters, and he is content so to be. 
Living all his days the life of a squire of his county, 
his habits of thought are as realistic as those of the 
class of which he is so great and unwonted an orna- 



294 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARTIAMENT. 

ment. All the difference is that his historical recol- 
lection is better than theirs. Things that they regard 
as sacred by reason of their antiquity, he knows to be 
of comparatively modern origin. In a note to "The 
Growth of the English Constitution," he makes the 
following manly declaration with regard to the monar- 
chical superstition which is so sedulously fostered in this 
country : ' ' There really seems no reason wh}'' the form 
of the executive government should not be held as 
lawful a subject for discussion as the House of Lords, 
the Established Church, the standing army, or any 
thing else. It shows simple ignorance, if it does not 
show something worse, when the word ' republican ' is 
used as synonymous with cut-throat or pickpocket. I 
do not find that in republican countries this kind of 
language is applied to the admkers of monarch}^ ; but 
the people who talk in this way are just those -s^dio have 
no knowledge of republics, either in past history or in 
present times. They may very liliel}^ have climbed a 
Swiss mountain ; but they have taken care not to ask 
what was the constitution of the country at its foot.' ' 

Edward Augustus Freeman was born at Harborne, 
in the neighborhood of Birmingham, in 1823. He 
unfortunately lost both parents before he was one year 
old; his father, John Freeman, Esq., of Fedmore 
Hall, Worcestershire, d3dng at the comparatively early 
age of forty. His paternal grandmother, who resided 
at Northampton, became his guardian, and with her he 
had his home till his removal to Oxford in 1841. Be- 
fore proceeding to the university, he had attended for 
several jears a school at Cheam, Surrey ; a private 
tutor, the Rev. Mr. Gutch, subsequently preparmg him 
for matriculation at Trinity College. There his great 



EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 295 

talent and' industry were not without their reward. 
He was elected a scholar, and in 1845 he became 
a fellow of his college. Twelve years later, after 
the publication of several of his historical works, he 
was made examiner in law and modern history, and, 
in 1873, examiner in the school of modern history. 
Both universities have vied with each other in recogniz- 
ing his vast attainments ; Oxford conferring on him 
the honorary degree of D.C.L., and Cambridge that 
of LL.D. Like many other Oxford men who have . 
subsequently arrived at a knowledge of the truth as it 
is in Radicalism, Mr. Freeman was brought up in the 
strictest bonds of political and ecclesiastical Tory- 
ism. His grandmother had sown seed at Northampton 
which the tractarians, then in the ascendant, watered 
at Oxford. Among his college friends was Patterson, 
now Monsignor, and other incipient Romanists of dis- 
tinction. About this period, likewise, he wrote verses, 
and very good verses too, as regard form, of an ultra- 
royalist or Jacobite character ; Carlos, a maternal 
ascendant, who, tradition says, was the last^man to 
strike a blow for the king at Worcester, being a favor- 
ite subject of his muse. 

But so sound an intelligence as Freeman's could not 
long draw sustenance from such unrealities. In 1847 
he married an estimable lady, the daughter of his 
former tutor, Mr. Gutch, and gradually put away the 
more childish things of political and ecclesiastical re- 
action. Slight, and it might be said almost whimsical, 
considerations at first weighed with him. Always an 
interested and critical student of history, church his- 
tory at first more particularly, he was struck with the 
unsatisfactory bearings of two ecclesiastical facts or 



296 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

fictions. Edward the Confessor had a wife, and the 
kingdom sorely wanted an heir to the crown ; but the 
saintty character of the monarch conld onh' be sus- 
tained by practical celibacy. Was this asceticism 
rational sanctit}'? Again, the salvation of some mil- 
lions of unfortunate Swedes was made to turn on the 
sufficiency of the consecration of a particular bishop of 
the sixteenth century. Was this reasonable theology ? 
Clearly the chaff of ritualism must be separated from 
the older and more solid grain of Anglicanism. 

The tractarian movement was not, however, all loss 
to jVIr. Freeman. It made him a profound student of 
architecture, and a clever sketcher of ecclesiastical 
buildings. In such matters he has often been con- 
sulted by the greatest authorities, among others by 
Sir Gilbert Scott. His ''Historj^ of Architecture" 
(1849), " An Essay on Window Tracery " (1850), and 
'^ The Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral " (1851), his ' 
earliest publications, are still works of acknowledged 
merit. 

While I am dealing with chm-ch matters, I may as 
well note the progress which this enlightened church- 
man has made in respect of the question of disestab- 
lishment and disendowment. He heartily supported 
the abolition of the Irish establishment ; and in 1874 he 
published a curiously tentative volume, in which he dis- 
cussed the position of the English Church, arriving at 
the somewhat novel conclusion that the property of the 
national church is not national propert}'. Its revenues, 
he argues, are in precisely the same position as those 
of Nonconformist communions. The sovereign power, 
however, being absolute, may appropriate whatever it 
has a mind. A neater little juggle with Austin's defmi- 



EDWAED AUGUSTUS FREEMAN. 297 

tion of sovereignty I do not remember to have seen. 
True, the state may never have by any formal act, as 
Mr. Freeman alleges, endowed the church as by law 
established ; but surely Mr. Freeman will not deny that 
there was a time when the church and the people were 
co-extensive, and in theory they are still one and indi- 
visible. In practice the so-called state church is 
merely a monopolizing sect which has fraudulently ap- 
propriated the shares of all the other sects. These 
latter, when they are strong enough to bring sovereign 
authority to bear, will eject the dispossessor, and com- 
pel him to disgorge his ill-gotten gains. He would be 
a bold churchman, indeed, who should propose to deal 
similarly with the revenues of Nonconformist commun- 
ions. More recently, however, the attitude of the 
state church towards the struggling Christian popula- 
tions of Turkey has satisfied Mr. Freeman, that, having 
ceased to act as the conscience of the nation, its moral 
justification is at an end. It is to be hoped Mr. Glad- 
stone and other zealous churchmen will likewise dis- 
cern how faithfully the Nonconformists of England 
have done what the established sect has so conspicu- 
ousty left undone. 

In the autumn of 1869 Mr. Freeman pricked the 
national conscience in a memorable manner regarding 
the "morality of field-sports." He held up the bar- 
barities of the battue to the shame and scorn of man- 
kind. The withers of ' ' quality ' ' were mercilessl}' 
wrung, from those of the Prince of Wales downwards. 
There were nunjberless attempted defences, but not one 
that Mr. Freeman was not able to break down with the 
greatest ease. The contemptible hypocrisy of persons 
like his Royal Highness who act as patrons of societies 



298 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

for the prevention of cruelty to costermongers' don- 
keys, while themselves delighting in the cruel and 
unmanly massacre of tame pigeons and semi-domesti- 
cated pheasants, was thoroughly exposed in the course 
of the controversy, and a well-aimed blow struck at the 
heart of the abomination of the game-laws, which have 
so long disgraced the statute-book of the country. 

" Strange that of all the living chain 
That binds creation's plan, 
There is but one delights in pain, — 
The savage monarch man !" 

It is hardly necessary to say, that, with perhaps the 
single exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Freeman is the 
greatest living master of the Eastern question in all its 
details. He was four years of age when the battle of 
Navarino was fought, and he remembers the receipt of 
the intelligence. He may be said to have been inter-' 
ested in the emancipation of the Eastern Christians 
ever since. At the time of the Crimean war his pen 
was incessantly employed in combating the national 
madness. The number of persons in this country who 
then understood the real issues in the East was insig- 
nificant, and Freeman was one of the few. He may be 
said to have advocated the ' ' bag and baggage ' ' polic}'' 
from the beginning ; and he never lost sight of his 
object. When the city fell down and worshipped the 
Sultan on the occasion of his visit to London, Mr. Free- 
man almost alone entered a spirited protest against 
the base idolatry, and described the Oi;iental tjrrant in 
befitting terms. When the Herzegovinian insurrection 
broke out he was one of the first who strove to range 
his countrymen on the side of the oppressed. By 



EDWARD AUGUSTUS TREEMAN. 299 

innumerable letters to the newspapers, and speeches in 
various towns, he did an immense deal to enlighten 
public opinion ; and he succeeded personally in raising 
no less a sum than fifty thousand dollars'in furtherance 
of the good cause. In 1877 he visited Greece, and 
was received by the people of such places as Zante, 
Corfu, Ithaca, and Athens, with unbounded enthu- 
siasm and gratitude. He addressed them in their own 
tongue, and, as he himself has related, was not merely 
cheered but kissed by certain of his audience. Among 
the Christian population of the Balkan Peninsula the 
names of Gladstone and Freeman are deservedly re- 
garded as household words. 

The greatest impeachment, in my opinion, of the 
soundness of Mr. Freeman's political judgment, was 
his justification of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine 
— I beg a thousand pardons, Elsass-Lothringen — by 
the Germans at the conclusion of the Franco-German 
war. He boldl}^ argued that Germany was entitled to 
rend from France a portion of territory which had once 
been Teutonic, whatever the inhabitants, who were 
notoriously French in sympathy, might say to the con- 
trary. The consent of the governed, the necessary 
condition of free government, was nowise needed when 
the precious Teuton had his fish to fry. Now, I admit 
that France had many offences at her back for which it 
was right that she should atone ; but had the ' ' man of 
blood and iron ' ' and the Majesty of Prussia none ? 
What of bleeding Poland? what of Silesia? what of 
Hanover? what of Schleswig-Holstein ? All this Pan- 
Teutonism conveniently overlooked. And what has 
been the result ? A war of revenge has been rendered 
a dead certainty. 



300 EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT. 

" Out of evil evil flourishes ; 
Out of tyranny tyranny buds." 

An imperial despotism has been established in 
Germany, at least as detestable as that which Louis 
Napoleon Bonaparte set up in France. The iron of 
that tyrsmnj has entered into the very soul of the 
German people, and, so long as it can be pretended 
that a Gallic revanche is possible, there will it remain. 
How Mr. Freeman could have justified such a palpable 
sowing of dragons' teeth, I have never been able to 
fathom. 

In 1868 Mr. Freeman contested Mid-Somerset in the 
Liberal interest, but without success. His failure, I 
consider, was a public loss of no small magnitude. He 
is a good speaker, and his special knowledge would, on 
many occasions in recent sessions, have been of the 
highest utility in Parliament. For five and twenty years 
he was a " Saturday Reviewer," and he wrote much in 
"The Pall Mall Gazette" in its more Liberal days. 
The House of Commons contains no member who, as a 
student of constitutional history, could compare for a 
moment with the author of the "Norman Conquest," 
the "History of Federal Government," and "Com- 
parative Politics." Any legislature might well be hon- 
ored by the presence of such a scholar, and any con- 
stituency in the kingdom might be proud of such a 
representative. 



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